


No Other Love

by ScarletteStar1



Category: Carol (2015), The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: CarolXTherese, Erotica, F/F, Love, Romance, lesbian love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 05:57:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 23,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9058564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarletteStar1/pseuds/ScarletteStar1
Summary: “I was blessed with love to love you, til the stars burn out above you.”  --  Jo Stafford, No Other Love.  A collection of short stories based on the movie Carol and the novel The Price of Salt.  Lengths and ratings will vary.  Also, please note they are posted in no particular order other than that for which my imagination begs.





	1. Third Eye

They sat in the sun room, off the green room where they usually sat. Therese had gotten accustomed to the green room, and felt somewhat out of place in this new space. Something about all of the glass, which glimmered around them as though they were in a bowl, even though it had grown dark outside. The room was lit with a few lamps, but it wasn’t terribly bright. Still, even in the dim light, the room with all its windows and wicker furniture did not seem particularly cozy. The green room seemed soft and casal. This room seemed angular and formal. Carol had put a record on the player in the green room, and they could hear Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong sing a duet of _They Can’t Take That Away From Me_.

She wondered if Carol had moved them into this room because there were only chairs and no sofa. The last time she’d been here, about a week earlier, they had eaten lunch in the green room, and Therese had sat close to Carol on the sofa, had snuck in close enough to her body so she could feel Carol’s heat seeping into her own flesh. She had taken the liberty of resting her head for a moment on Carol’s shoulder, and as she did so, Carol had patted Therese’s thigh, fondly, as one might pat a favorite and well-indulged animal. _The way you wear your hat. The way you sip your tea._ Perhaps Carol had not liked her sitting so close. Although at the time, Therese had smiled because the closeness seemed mutual and affectionate and happy.

“You’re thinking something,” Carol said, bringing Therese back to the sun room with the sound of her voice. “I can tell when you are thinking because the corner of your lips twitch.”

“Sorry,” Therese mumbled. Her fingers came involuntarily to touch her mouth, almost as though it had betrayed her and she would chastise it with her touch.

“Don’t be sorry,” Carol said and Therese looked at her face. _The memory of all that_. She smiled at Therese and didn’t look cross, but more sly or curious with that left eyebrow arched up over her gray eye. “But do come clean and tell me what you are thinking.”

“It’s just,” Therese began and paused. _The way you haunt my dreams. No, they can’t take that away from me_.

“Just what?”

“This room.”

“What about this room, Therese?”

Therese shrugged and resettled herself on the rattan chair she’d chosen on the other side of a glass tea table which separated her from Carol. “Well, we’ve never sat in here before,” she said and thought how simple and stupid she sounded saying it.

“It’s a big house. There are lots of rooms in which we have not sat. Not yet, anyway,” Carol said. She crossed her legs and twisted her body away from Therese so she could look out the window behind her. “Do you not like this room?”

“Well,” Therese began and again she paused. “Do you like this room?”

“I do. I like the sense of being up and in the sky. I like watching the color fade to black from all the clouds, and I like seeing the little specks of stars. But I asked you if you liked the room. Be truthful,” Carol advised still looking out the window. Therese wondered what Carol saw out there, aside from her own reflection on the glass. _The way we danced til three_. The sky was black, clouded over and completely void of starlight.

“It’s fine,” Therese said. “I’d grown used to the green room, that’s all.”

“Ah, so you had.” Carol turned back around and reached into the box on the glass table to take a cigarette. But then she seemed to think better of it and she put it back in the box and stood instead. She walked over to another table that stood against the wall, upon which sat several crystal decanters. “Fancy a drink?” She asked Therese the question over her shoulder with a little flip of her blonde waves, but did not wait for Therese to answer and poured several fingers of amber liquid into two tumblers. She came and stood in front of Therese and handed her the drink. Their hands brushed as Therese took the drink. She shivered although Carol’s fingers were warm. “Are you cold?” Carol asked her. “Do you want a sweater?”

“No. No. I’m fine,” Therese answered and she smiled. _The way you changed my life, no no they can’t take that away from me._ They clinked glasses and sipped at the liquor. “Mmmm. It’s good,” Therese sighed as the warmth spread down her throat and out in tendrils into her lungs and heart. “This is different too.”

“Hazelnuts,” Carol said. She turned her back to Therese and reclaimed her seat by the window.

“I’d been expecting whiskey,” Therese said. Ella began singing a plea for someone to watch over her. Therese took another sip and licked her lips.

“Of course you were expecting whiskey,” Carol said and her mouth was not smiling, but her eyes seemed to be merrily teasing Therese. “The green room. Whiskey. I guess tonight is all about changes, doing things differently, as it were. Do you mind change, Therese?”

“No. Not particularly,” she answered honestly enough. Being here at all with Carol was a change for her. Everything she felt was a change for her, and everything she felt at that moment was for Carol. And following this logic, she decided she must like change, because it would have been impossible to dislike what she felt for Carol. Actually, she must like change quite a lot, she decided. She smiled and looked at Carol from her lowered eyelids, then wondered if the alcohol was hitting her that hard and fast as she caught herself. She imagined she looked like a pathetic, lovesick, little dog.

“But you like the green room?” Carol asked. Therese nodded. “Would you say you prefer the green room?”

“Maybe,” Therese said and cleared her throat. “Yes, I suppose I would say I prefer the green room.”

“And why is that, do you suppose?”

Therese wanted to say, _It’s because there is a comfortable couch on which I can sit terribly close to you and feel your body heat and smell your perfume. I prefer it because I love you and it is as though I need to be close to you to live, like my skin needs to breathe you and when I am this far away from you everything feels impossible_. But all she said was, “It’s quite comfortable there, but of course this is nice too.”

Carol tossed back the rest of her drink and then rose to refill their glasses. Therese sipped again and again, feeling drunk already on the warmth and wishing it was coming from Carol’s flesh and not alcohol. Carol sat back down in her seat. “Would you say you like sitting in the green room on the couch? With me?”

“Yes,” Therese said breathily and it was almost as though she could see the word on her breath as it floated over to Carol. _Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes because you know I’ll always say yes to you. I’m quite certain I will cease to exist if I don’t say yes to you._

“So, you like sitting with me,” Carol began and to anyone other than Therese, her voice would have sounded nonchalant, almost bored. “And I imagine you like resting your pretty head on my shoulder?”

“I do. Yes.” Therese whispered. She’d not eaten much at supper and she could feel the drink curling in her stomach like a great, sleepy cat. It made her feel heavy, although not unpleasantly so. At supper, she had picked around her plate, so exquisitely glad to be sitting across from Carol she could barely eat. When Carol had asked why she wasn’t eating, she had lied and said she’d had a very late lunch and must have still been filled up from it. Therese had been embarrassed by how her hands had quivered as they held her fork, and it had almost seemed torture to have to look down at her plate to aim and spear at her food when she could have been looking up and across at Carol. As a result of her meager meal, she was now becoming rapidly and easily tipsy.

“Here, then,” Carol said and patted the cushion next to her thigh. “Come sit with me.”

“The seat isn’t big enough. I won’t fit,” Therese demurred.

“You’re just a slip of a thing. Of course you’ll fit. Come here.” She squished her body against the arm of the chair and looked down at the space she’d created for Therese and then back up at Therese as if to say, _See, I told you so_. Therese stood and placed her glass down on the table. She walked around the table. It was really only about three steps, but it seemed a journey. She stood before Carol for a moment and then slid her body into the small space on the chair next to Carol. She smoothed the fabric of her skirt down over her legs and wiggled a bit, getting comfortable. “There you are. Comfortable?”

“Thank you, yes,” Therese said.

“We’re even closer like this than we were on the couch, you see?”

“That’s true.”

“And you like being close to me, Therese?” Again, had anyone else been listening to Carol’s voice, they might have only heard the teasing and indifference. But not Therese. Therese heard all of the questions within that one question. She heard the insecurity and she heard the hope. She heard it all and she sighed against Carol and her question, trying to make herself even closer.

“I like being close to you, Carol,” she managed. “I love your perfume. And I love how soft your hair is as it brushes my cheek.” To prove her point, Therese nuzzled the side of her face against Carol’s blonde bob.

“Aren’t you brave?” Carol said in a very low voice. She stretched her arm over the back of the seat so that it wrapped around Therese. “Sweet, brave girl,” she said and touched the back of Therese’s neck. Therese shivered again at Carol’s touch. “You’re cold. We should get you a sweater, dear one,” Carol said and started to move.

“No!” Therese said suddenly and grabbed at Carol to keep her in place. “I’m not cold. Really. I’m not cold at all.”

“But you shivered,” Carol said. They looked into each other’s eyes then and did not look away.

“Yes,” Therese murmured.

“Tell me why. Tell me why you shivered.”

“I think you know why.”

“And how would I know why you shivered?”

“Because we’re the same, aren’t we,” Therese said.

“But I didn’t shiver,” Carol teased.

“No. You didn’t. But we are the same. Aren’t we?” Therese asked and she could hear a bit more desperation in her voice than she would have liked.

“I believe we are,” Carol replied. They were very still and very close, looking at one another.

“When I was very young,” Therese began. “My mother sent me a box of crayons to the boarding school where I was raised. I seldom got gifts from her, but one of the nuns at school had phoned and told her I’d an aptitude for visual art. So she sent me a box of crayons and a chunk of paper. There was a shade of blue that I loved. It was called Cornflower Blue. It was my favorite crayon. I liked the name. It sounded lovely, although I’ve never seen a cornflower in real life.” Therese’s voice faded into the room. The record had stopped and another had not dropped down. There was a faint, scratchy noise from the green room, and she could hear Carol breathe, but other than that it was silent.

“Cornflower Blue,” Carol said in that low voice. “And why do you think of this now?”

“Because if I had to pick a color to draw your eyes, it would be that blue.”

“Oh,” Carol sighed and her forehead came to rest against Therese’s. “You little doll,” Carol said and Therese could feel Carol’s breath on her own lips. It was damp and hot and smelled slightly smoky and sweet like the hazelnut liqueur.  "You're really something.  You know that?"  

“Not really,” Therese said.

“Really,” Carol said, definitively and she nodded against Therese’s head, forcing it to bump along gently with hers. “Really, really.” Therese realized she had closed her eyes, and she opened them. Carol’s eyes were already open. They were huge and gray and blinding to Therese. “Close your eyes, little doll,” Carol whispered. Therese obeyed, and she did not know if Carol kept her own eyes open or closed, but she suspected that she’d closed them too. Carol’s hands came to Therese’s waist and Therese rested her hands on Carol’s knees. Their breath caught the same rhythm and their bodies rose and fell, rose and fell together.

“Carol, can I kiss you?” Therese asked, her voice a meek whisper.

“No,” Carol replied, but her hands squeezed Therese’s waist. “No. Not yet.”

“Perhaps I should go,” Therese said and started to pull away.

“Nonsense. Come back here.” Carol pulled her back and pressed their foreheads together again. Her hands came to Therese’s cheeks and held her face still against her own. “Once I went to see a gypsy fortune teller, and she told me there is this little window into our souls, right here, in the middle of our foreheads where we are touching now, Therese. She told me that if we sit like this, and if we look deep in one another, we will be able to see the same things, like a movie playing between us and only us. She said it was called a third eye. Tell me, can you see into my third eye? And what do you see?”

“Hmmm,” Therese said. “I don’t know. The ocean, perhaps. A long swath of sandy beach and ocean waves tumbling onto the shore. That’s what I see.”

“Yes. You would see that. That’s lovely.”

“But it isn’t what you see?”

“No. Not yet.” Carol said, and after Therese felt the last puffs of Carol’s breath from her words, Therese could tell Carol’s lips had slipped up into a smile, even though Therese kept her eyes closed. They both sat like that, foreheads together, eyes closed, for quite some time. Finally Carol said, “Someday I shall take you to a place where all the cornflowers bloom.” She said it in a gust, as though she had been holding her breath prior to saying it.

\-----------------------------------------

Back in the city the next day, Therese went into a liquor store. She asked if they had a cordial that tasted of hazelnuts. The man behind the counter procured a bottle of amber liquid. It was the same color as what she’d shared with Carol, although it was in a different looking bottle. She brought it back to her apartment and closed all the curtains. She got a glass from the kitchen and took the bottle into her bedroom. She undressed until she was completely naked. She sat in her bed with the covers pulled up over her legs. Her torso was bare and she shivered in the brisk air of her apartment. She twisted open the bottle and poured some of the liquor into her glass. She leaned back against her headboard and sipped from the glass. The quality of the liquor was clearly not as decadent as that she’d had at Carol’s, but it warmed her center and tasted familiar. It was in that familiarity Therese closed her eyes and heard the sigh of Carol’s _not yet_.


	2. You Belong to Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm pretty sure we've all been here before. . . please note, these little stories are in no particular order, other that that which my brain begs them to take. For the most part they will be cannon compliment. xoxo!

It had been three days since she’d heard from Carol, and yet it seemed just over a year. Or ten. Twenty. Therese counted the days on her fingers again, just to be sure an inordinate amount of time hadn’t passed without her knowing. Perhaps she’d been asleep for a hundred years, like that fairy story about Rip Van Winkle. But no. It had only been three days. Three of her fingers poked up and into the air, slender and burning, like birthday cake candles.

She kept expecting the phone to ring, and when it didn’t, she made a point of asking the landlady if she’d had any calls. She asked as many times as she could before she became self conscious. Then she sat inside her apartment with a book, pretending to read all the while keeping a keen ear for the phone.

She drank some wine. It was the same wine she and Carol had had at their last supper out. Therese had made a mental note of the bottle and brand, and then bought one and brought it back to her apartment. The wine made her brain dance and for a moment she thought she’d just go out to the phone on the landing and call Carol. Or she could buy a bottle and take the train out to Carol’s. But no. She would not call. She would not go.

She put on records that made her think of Carol. _I’ll be so alone without you. . . maybe you’ll be lonesome too, and blue_. She swayed in front of the record player until the music stopped, then she bent and picked up the needle and played the song again. She swayed her hips side to side until she could have wept with the misery.

How was it possible to feel this? To be so smitten and yet so despondent? It didn’t fit with any of the stories she’d heard from friends as they tittered about love. Because surely that was what this was. Love. She swallowed the word with a gulp of wine, and complication flowed over her palate in a crimson gush. She imagined Carol standing before her, a wry smile on her lips, a wry smile Therese would kiss and kiss until it was bruised and swollen.

And what then?

What did women do after that part, after the kissing and embracing?

She’d only been with Richard. She knew the crude and mostly unpleasant mechanics of biology, but it spoke not to the intricate feelings she had for Carol. She felt if they could just lie down together in a bed with fresh sheets and big, soft pillows, they would figure out the mystery of it all. For some reason, she imagined Carol would know just what to do. Carol with her worldly airs; yes, she would know what came next. Therese imagined her fingers unbuttoning Carol’s blouse and stroking the pale flesh of her neck, all the while kissing and kissing. Their lips would taste of the same wine and the inside of their mouths would be silky and hot. A heated fog descended upon her, lowered itself into the pit of her stomach where it swirled and fought. She lit a cigarette and paced the expanse of her living room, several times, in an attempt to dispel the warmth of it.

She went to the door of her apartment and listened for the ring of the phone. Surely, she was thinking and wanting so hard for Carol that she must call, just now, just as she stood there in her stocking feet, the glass of wine, empty by her hips. _Just remember, darling, all the while, you belong to me._

Maybe that was it.

Carol had called her “darling”. She’d said it in an off handed and completely natural way while they were at her house, and yet it had stayed in Therese’s chest, almost like a pain from which she could not rid herself.

An abomination.

That’s what Richard and his kind would call it.

And what would Carol say about it? Carol with her neat wool suits and silk scarves. Carol with her gleaming hair. Carol with her pale skin and freckles that one could only see if they were very close, and in the right light. What would Carol say about these feelings Therese harbored like fugitives in her soul?

That’s why Therese would not go out to the phone and call. It would be disingenuous, she thought, to engage Carol under these false pretenses. Perhaps she could never see or talk to Carol again until she rid herself of this dramatic crush. It would not be fair to desire from Carol things she had no right to want. And then she would lose her forever anyway. The thought was nearly as unbearable as not hearing Carol’s voice, not smelling her perfume, not watching her fingers hold a cigarette, not seeing the ephemeral little rings of smoke drift from her mouth.

Suddenly she felt sleepy and she leaned against the door, pressed her ear into it, thought certainly she would hear the ring of the phone. “Please,” she whispered and felt, for one moment, she might do something violent if the phone did not ring. But it didn’t ring, and she didn’t do anything drastic, although the thought crossed her mind to smash her glass on the floor by her feet.

_Disingenuous. Disingenuous. Disingenuous._

She chanted the word to steady herself. She counted the syllables. Five. _Disingenuous_. It was the first line of a haiku. _Abomination_. That had five syllables also. It could be the last line of the haiku. But what on earth would go in the middle? And how on earth would she continue to live life checking for the noise of the phone every five minutes? _Impossible complex mess._ There it was. The middle line.

She sat down with a pen and paper and began to write. _I feel I love you. I hardly know how to go about my days when you are not near, when I cannot hear your voice. Once, you accidentally brushed my shoulder with your own and I felt I would stop breathing and then be born anew in the warmth of your touch, start breathing again because of you, because I belong to you_. . . She stopped and crumpled up the paper, threw it at the waste basket.

She took a fresh sheet and wrote, T _hinking of you and hoping you are well. I’ve a mind to go and see the new play at the theatre in Chinatown. Let me know if you’d like to join me_. Then she crumpled that up and threw it in the direction of the waste basket as well.

 _I miss you_ , she wrote next. Then she wrote it over and over again in a steady cursive current like she was a schoolgirl being punished. _ImissyouImissyouImissyouImissyou. I miss you_. The missive met the same fate as the other two.

Through the walls, she heard the muffled, grinding ring of the telephone. She sprang from her seat and raced to the door. Flinging the door open, she smiled helplessly. Someone was already there and answering the phone. He looked up at her, caught her eye and she started to say, “Is it for me?” But then he sat down on the little stool and commenced a conversation. Dejected, she closed the door and went back into her apartment.

She decided to indulge in a few minutes of being annoyed with Carol for not calling, for not even writing, but as soon as she began mentally reproaching her, Therese felt guilty and promptly stopped. Certainly Carol was busy with the house or with Rindy, or meeting with her lawyer. Certainly Carol had many more pressing things to deal with besides Therese at the moment. Certainly Therese should be more understanding of the many demands on Carol. Therese smiled at her foolishness and decided to go out for a walk. Some fresh air would clear her head and distract her. She went to the hook and grabbed her coat and hat, slipped her feet into her shoes and buttoned her coat up to her neck. It would be brisk in the fading daylight. She walked to the door and opened it.

There she was. Carol. Standing in Therese’s doorway, her hand poised as if to knock.

“I didn’t hear the bell ring,” Therese said, confused and then embarrassed by how stupid she sounded.

“Well, hello to you too,” Carol said and smiled. “There was a lady coming in downstairs and she let me into the building.”

“Of course,” Therese said, adjusting to the shock of seeing this apparition before her. “And hello. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude, I was just surprised.”

“Then my mission is complete. I was in the city on business and thought I’d come round and surprise you.”

“Would you like to come in?”

“But you look like you are on your way out.”

“I was just going to take a little stroll. I’d started to get restless and thought it’d do me good to get out for a bit.”

“Ah, I see,” Carol said with that haughty tone as if she really did know it all, as if she knew everything Therese had been doing and thinking prior to her arrival. “Then would your restless little self care to join me for an early supper?”

“Yes,” Therese said. “Absolutely.” She smiled and realized her mouth had been somewhat agape, and it struck her as patently ridiculous that she’d not been smiling at Carol from the first moment of seeing her there in her doorway.

“Now you look happy to see me,” Carol said.

“Very,” Therese said and added silently to herself, _I missed you so much_.

They stepped out together and walked up the street to hail a cab. Therese felt small by Carol’s side, but not in a bad way. She felt it as though she would fit perfectly right inside of her, like a secret seed that would blossom into a wonderful surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading and commenting! I'm truly touched by the warm reception my first contribution to this fandom has received. Your comments make my day, so feel free to keep them coming! xoxo.


	3. Second Chance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While I loved the movie, Carol, I am taking a lot more of my canon and style cues from Highsmith's novel for these little stories. . . that being said, the novel is told entirely from Therese's POV... I've wondered what it would sound like to hear from Carol, what her internal monologue would be like. So this story is an experiment with Carol's POV. I am really loving all the comments and am so touched by them. . . Thank you so very much. xoxo.

I saw her. That was that. 

She was wearing a ridiculous cap, like a Santa cap, all red and white and fuzzy. Beneath it, her tiny face was pale as ice but for her lips which were full and red. I watched her open a box and talk to other customers, unaware of my presence. I took a step in her direction. My footfalls were lost in the rustle of tissue paper and the chatter of the crowd. This ambient camouflage emboldened me to take more steps. I approached her, got close enough so I could appreciate the dark fringe of hair curling against her jawline, and the small pearl earrings nestled in her earlobes. 

Our eyes met, and though her lashes fluttered over hers, she did not look away. Dazed, I asked about dolls. She no longer had the doll in stock that I so desired for Rindy. I cursed myself for waiting so long. I made her pull out a bunch of other ridiculous doll paraphernalia, asked her opinion on cases and clothes, just to prolong the encounter, just to hear her voice, which surprised me by being deeper and more assertive than I’d imagined it would be. 

She had a demeanor that was almost angelic. No, maybe not angelic precisely. More like something out of a fairy tale, a little elf or a changeling, something small enough she could be cradled in the blossom of a lily, a miniscule creature left behind to fend for herself. A little foundling who might be raised by woodland pixies. A second chance. My second chance. 

The thought captured me and clenched my throat in a most dramatic manner. I reached into my bag for a cigarette and made to light it. 

“You can’t smoke in here,” she said softly, as if only for my ears. I mumbled an apology, but truthfully, I wasn’t sorry. I would have taken out a dozen cigarettes just to hear her voice tell me I couldn’t smoke them then and there. I suddenly longed to hear her tell me all the rules I should follow, and decided I would push against them, test her limits to see how far I could get until I heard her voice again chide me for whatever infraction. I settled instead to ask her repeatedly about my order. Stupid questions about when and how it would arrive. I asked until I could see I made her uncomfortable, which was not my intent. Then I stopped asking and knew I needed to go. 

But before taking my leave, I caught her eyes again, lingered only for a moment, but in that moment. . . oh in that moment. In that moment we grew old together, fast before anyone could stop us. We lived a whole life before she could even blink and died at the very same instant in one another’s arms. 

In that moment, we traveled to Paris and went all the way up the Eiffel Tower. She was scared of heights, and I kept my arm around her slender waist to steady her. At the very top, a wind blew up and she almost lost her hat, but I caught it and pressed it back down on her head with both of my hands, and in that silky, surprising voice she said, “My hero.” 

In that moment we made a garden in the back of my house. Each day we got up and took coffee next to tall sunflowers that provided a trellis for violet morning glories to climb. “What a lovely idea you had, Darling,” I told her and our fingers twisted around each other like vines. We sat in whitewashed, iron chairs and exchanged all our stories until hers became mine, and mine hers and we could no longer tell them apart. We watched as a summer storm blew in over the sky, and ran laughing into the house as the rain began. We fell into one another’s arms in the hallway where we kept all the coats and umbrellas, rocked against one another until we could no longer stand. 

In that moment, we ordered groceries for holiday meals and everyday teas. Prime rib and biscuits and sweet potatoes and chicken we would fry up, inexpertly late at night. Long carrots with the greens still attached. Translucent scallops wrapped in waxed paper, scented with the faint memory of the sea. 

In that moment there were dozens of embraces, tentative and shy at first and gradually they grew bigger and bolder while we whispered against each other’s mouths in the middle of the night. 

In that moment we caught one another’s eyes across book stores and smiled, then later surprised one another with packages wrapped in paper and tied up with red ribbon. “Oh, I love ribbon,” she said and curled it up in her fist and stroked it against her cheek. 

In that moment, we fought bitterly, slammed doors, and threw bone china cups that shattered against the wall, stained the beige striped paper a deeper shade. But then came tearful apologies, quivering fingers clutching at damp cheeks, hot lips pressing tight and begging forgiveness only we could give, and eagerly did. 

In that moment, she brought me a cloth for my eyes when I had a headache and stroked the inside of my arm.

In that moment, we travelled to Vermont and I taught her how to ski. When she twisted her ankle, I brought her ice. She sat in a chair in our hotel room, before dinner, in just her slip. The strap slipped down her shoulder and I replaced it with a single finger and then kissed the top of her head. 

In that moment we went to the pictures and held hands under my coat, our knees and shoulders pressed firmly against each other.

In that moment, I nursed her through a terrible chest cold in which she lay feverish and frightened me with how weak she’d become until I insisted on ringing the doctor who advised us to travel south, which we did. We stayed in a cabin near the ocean and I squashed a spider with my shoe. She found a monkey in a local town and squealed with delight as its fist tangled in her hair which had grown golden streaked with sun. I mixed us gin and tonics and called her my angel, my devil, my sweetest girl. She rolled her eyes and led me back to the bedroom. She grew healthy and we returned home. As I stood at the sink one night finishing some dishes, she came up behind me, wrapped her arms around my waist and pressed her cheek in between my shoulder blades. “You know I love you?” She asked so quietly, as though she’d not told me every single day since we met. 

Since we met, at that very moment in that crowded department store, her wearing that goofy hat and smiling up at me in a most conciliatory manner meant no doubt to sell things. 

“It’ll come on time?” I asked again, possibly for the third time. 

“Of course,” she answered with a little pulse of her lips. It had been a long time since I’d believed in a God or heaven or hell. But as I stood there, I begged whatever power moved the planets to give me this, this second chance. And I promised I would do right by it.


	4. Prove It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lovers' squabble. . . and resolution.

“Look, there’s a piano,” Carol said. They sat at a corner table in the lounge of the hotel bar. It was getting late and the room was mostly empty. Therese said nothing in response to Carol but tossed back the last sip of her martini. They had not spoken, or rather, Therese had not spoken, for about the past five hours. It had been a long day of silence in the car, as they checked into the hotel, in the room while they got ready for dinner, and then as they sat there. The only words Therese had spoken were to the waiter when she ordered her dinner. Carol had noted that Therese’s voice had seemed even sweeter than usual as she smiled at the waiter and ordered her supper.

_You’ll regret it._

_I’ll regret nothing!_

_You’re young. How could you know what you want or what you will regret? What happened in Waterloo cannot happen again, Therese._

_How can you be so cruel? To give me the one thing my heart desires for only an instant and then yank it away? You’re cruel, Carol. That’s just what you are!_

Their angry and hopeless words echoed off the plains and lakes they’d passed, until they settled and became part of the nondescript scenery.

Carol shifted positions in her seat and took a deep breath which she exhaled without any pretense whatsoever. Therese didn’t even look at her. “You’re still mad at me, then?” Still nothing. “Well, it’s about three thousand miles back to Manhattan. You’re going to have to talk to me at some point, Therese.”

Therese responded by putting up her hand and signaling to the bartender that she wanted another drink.

“Are you quite certain another one is a good idea?” Carol asked, knowing it would elicit a response from her stony companion. “This will be your third.”

“I am an adult, Carol, popular to contrary opinion. I can make my own decisions.”

Carol chuckled in spite of the fact she knew it would infuriate Therese. “I think you meant ‘contrary to popular opinion,’ darling. You see? You’re drunk already. Maybe have just a coffee?”

“I know precisely what I meant. I do not need you to monitor me.” Therese snapped. She snatched the packet of cigarettes off the table, tapped one out and lit it with a sharp flick of her wrist. She sharply exhaled the smoke into the air in a manner she’d seen Carol do countless times. The waiter came back with her drink and set it before her on a fresh, little square of napkin. He asked if there would be anything else they needed. It was late and the kitchen was closing. They were welcome to stay as long as they wanted in the bar area where they had eaten their late supper, but the staff would be departing, the waiter informed them.

“That will be all, thank you,” Carol said and signed the check he held out to her so their dinner and drinks would be charged to the room. The waiter thanked them, took his leave, and Carol turned back to Therese. “Shall we discuss whatever it is that is bothering you?”

“Why? Why should we? You’re allowed to get cross with me all the time for no rhyme or reason and we never have to talk about that, do we? I believe as an equal party in this relationship I am entitled to the same rights. Am I not?”

“Of course you are, my dear. But now you are simply being petulant, thereby simply proving the point I was simply attempting to make earlier.”

“Shut up, Carol! _Simply_ shut up. You think you know everything, see everything, feel everything, just because you are older and supposedly wiser? Well you don’t. I know and see and feel things too. I may not have been married or had a baby, but that does not in any way make what I know irrelevant!” Therese hissed all of this in a single breath and punctuated it at the end with a hiccough.

Carol smiled in what she hoped was not an overly indulgent manner, although if she were being honest, she had to admit the way Therese’s fingers flew up to her lips after her little belch was purely adorable and she would have indulged the girl just about anything at that moment. “Of course, Therese,” Carol began in a steady and slow tone. “I’m so sorry I made you feel otherwise. Thank you for telling me how you feel. I will try much harder to show how very seriously I take you.”

“Well, would you listen to that,” Therese sighed. “The mighty Carol Aird issues an apology. At long last.” She scowled at Carol as she took a tiny sip of her martini. She knew she was drunk and did not particularly want to get much more drunk, but she also wanted to prove to Carol that she could make her own informed decisions regarding her intake of alcohol.

Carol looked around the bar. It was empty but for one bartender wiping things down. She knew she could make this situation instantly better by taking Therese’s hand. If only they were in the privacy of their own room, she could wrap her arms around her, hold her fast and whisper the things she knew would quiet this little storm. She could hold her and pet her and smooth away all the jagged words and feelings of the day, despite the fact she’d vowed never to do so again. She would do it. And then she would do it again, heaven help her.

She thought of suggesting they go up to the room. How she longed to be up in their room.

But they were not in their room, and there was another part of Carol that did not feel exactly ready to be in their room because she knew what would come, and she wanted it with all her heart, but also wanted to not want it and fight it for just a bit longer. Her eyes narrowed as she thought how sweet it would feel to give in to the wanting, to put her fingers on Therese’s throat and lower her head and kiss the little hollow at the base as she felt the weight and warmth of Therese’s head falling back in the palm of her hand. She weighed the decision of taking Therese’s hand in the public space of the lounge where they sat. It was a risk she was just about willing to take, and was about to take, when like a benediction from the universe, the light went out behind the bar and the waiter disappeared through double doors into the already dark kitchen. In the remaining dim candlelight, Carol reached out for Therese’s fingers.

As soon as Carol touched her, Therese’s shoulders descended from her ears back into their normal, relaxed position. She exhaled and let go of the furrows on her face. She stamped out her cigarette in the ashtray. She looked at Carol and held her gaze, although not with any anger or spite.

“Can we be past this now?” Carol asked. She gave a gentle squeeze to Therese’s fingers which was returned with a sheepish smile by Therese.

“Yes,” Therese said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Carol said.

“Shall we go upstairs?”

“Oh, I don’t know. That piano over there looks so lonely. How about you play us a song, baby?” Carol smiled at Therese, but Therese scowled.

“How about _you_ play us a song, _baby_?” Therese said.

“But you play much nicer than I do.”

“Nonsense. I barely play at all.”

“My point exactly,” Carol laughed, but Therese put her hands in her lap and raised her eyebrows expectantly at Carol, until eventually Carol sighed, “Fine.” She stood up and went over to the piano. She sat down at the bench and smoothed her skirt as she opened the door to the keys. She stroked them lightly, then found a position for her fingers and began to play.

Therese came and stood behind Carol as she played. It was a simple melody and Carol played it in a clean but amateure manner. She paused as she felt Therese behind her. “Keep playing,” Therese said softly and Carol complied. Therese placed her hands on Carol’s shoulders, and knew they were both sharing a distant memory from another land and another life. Therese left her hands on Carol’s shoulders and Carol did not stop playing, although Therese thought she felt her breathing quicken ever so slightly. Therese dug her fingers into the cashmere of Carol’s sweater. Carol missed a couple notes, but played through her error.

Therese sat down on the bench next to Carol, their thighs pressed together in a soft way. Therese brought a hand up to stroke Carol’s forearm as Carol continued playing the piano, feeling the muscles as they worked under her skin, under the material of her sweater. Her hands hovered over Carol’s fingers as they moved over the keys, slower now. And eventually, Therese put both of her hands over Carol’s and gently lowered them down, so they stilled her hands on the piano in a muted and dissonant chord.

Carol turned her head to look at Therese who was already looking at her. “Shall I stop?” Carol asked, her mouth stretching into a sly smile. “Is my playing really that awful?”

Therese had not moved her hands from Carol’s, despite the awkwardness of the position. “I am so in love with you,” she whispered, her face a mix of wonder and severity.

“Oh, Therese,” Carol began. “You’re so young, you don’t yet--” but she stopped when she saw the warning look in Therese’s eyes and the subtle twitch of her lips into a frown. “Well, perhaps we shouldn’t get into that again,” she said as Therese wove her fingers in between her own and pulled them off of the piano so they angled toward one another on the piano bench.

“I’m in love with you, Carol.”

“Mmm. Prove it,” Carol whispered with a wickedly lascivious flick of her eyebrow and sideways slant of her lips. Therese brought her face closer to Carol’s so they were practically touching.

“I love you,” Therese said again, and as her lips moved in their vow, they brushed against Carol’s.

“Then prove it,” Carol whispered again, her lips now speaking against Therese’s. Therese’s tongue poked out from between her lips and darted over Carol’s mouth. Carol caught her breath and then laughed in sudden surprise.

“I’ll prove it every day and every night for the rest of our lives, if you like. I’ll prove it as many times as I need to, and in as many different ways as we can imagine to reassure you, if it is proof you need. But right now, I’d like to take you to bed and to prove it to you there.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, look at baby, all grown up,” Carol murmured and nuzzled her forehead against Therese’s in the same way she had all those weeks ago in the sun porch off the green room in her house. In the back of the kitchen someone dropped something and they heard the noise of glass breaking which caused both of them to jump up and apart, then to look wildly around them. They caught their breath only when reassured they were entirely alone. Together they heaved a sigh of relief, but the startle hadn’t broken the spell between them. “Very well,” Carol said. “Let’s go up.”

They slid off the piano bench, and took their leave of the lounge. They walked toward the elevator and they were silent, although now the silence was something different all together.


	5. Green

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little nugget of fic inspired by Therese's description of Carol's scent in the book by Highsmith.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't even believe what an amazing fandom this is, but I never want to leave it. Thank you all so very, very much for reading my little blurbs and for leaving such generous comments. It really means the world. xoxo.

“What about you? What’s your favorite color, Therese?”

“Green,” Therese answered without a moment’s hesitation.

“Green? Really?” Carol hummed, as if it were the most interesting thing she’d ever heard.

“Yes. Green.” Therese answered definitively with a small smile. She’d never particularly liked the color, to be completely honest, despite it being the color of her eyes and a color in which she looked nice. But recently, she’d become almost obsessed with it. Her eyes would be drawn to it; in crowds, she would pick out the people with green coats or scarves or jewelry. On the train, back and forth between Carol’s house, she’d gaze out the window, mesmerized by the verdant blur of conifers against the steely winter sky, trying to find the scent of Carol’s perfume in the fibers of her own clothing and feeling frustrated when it eluded her. She’d even saved enough of her pay to purchase a jade green, silk dress, for which she’d not yet had any occasion (or the nerve) to wear.

“It’s never been my favorite color,” Carol said. “But I bet it looks lovely on you. With your eyes. How come you don’t wear it more often?”

“I’ve only started to like it more recently,” Therese said. She planned to not say more but when she met Carol’s gray eyes with her own, it was as though they drew the words out of her. “I bought a green dress. But I haven’t worn it yet.”

“Why is that?”

“Oh, well,” Therese fumbled nervously. “It’s a bit more fancy. Not something for everyday. Maybe it’s more for special.” She considered the light material of the dress and its low neckline. She twisted her fingers in her lap, and then realized she was doing it and willed herself to stop.

“I’d like to see you in this dress, Darling,” Carol said and smiled all the way up to her eyes. “We shall have to find a special occasion for this fancy dress of yours. A dinner out in the City, perhaps? Would you like that?”

“Alright,” Therese murmured and tucked her legs up under her like a little bird folding into herself, trying to make herself smaller, more compact. She drank the last sips of tea in her cup and set it down on the table in front of the couch, where they sat in Carol’s living room.

Without asking, Carol picked up the teapot and refilled Therese’s cup, then set the pot down and picked up the small, silver tongs in the sugar bowl and dropped a cube of sugar into the cup. She’d broken eye contact with Therese only slightly to ensure her aim with the hot tea and sugarcube were accurate. Therese looked away to pick her cup back up, just to have something to do with her hands, and looked down into it. The sugarcube was vaporizing into the amber liquid like a little cloud. Therese felt her cheeks grow hot as she imagined the heat of Carol’s mouth and how she would dissolve under Carol’s tongue just like that little lump of sweet. Therese dipped her head and wished she could make herself small enough to fit inside the teacup, curl right up and hide under the warm blanket of tea. “What is this?” Carol chuckled. “What are you thinking about, you sly, little girl?” She crooked her finger and tickled under Therese’s chin, trying to get Therese to look back up at her.

“It’s nothing,” Therese said, uncomfortable and enthralled all at once. She smelled Carol’s perfume when she brought her hand up to her chin. Therese closed her eyes and imagined Carol dabbing the scent on the insides of her wrists with the stopper of the crystal bottle, as she’d seen her do several times. Therese found herself wanting to grab Carol’s hand, bring her delicate wrist to her own face, and nuzzle the pale skin there. But instead, Therese playfully pushed Carol’s hand away and repeated, “It’s nothing.”

“Doesn’t look like nothing,” Carol teased. “In fact it looks like kitty has gotten into the cream. But you take your tea black with just one sugar. No cream. So. . . what is the blush and the smirk all about?”

“Oh, Carol! I’m hardly smirking!” Therese laughed and touched her hot cheek, trying to will her blush away but finding it only deepened. Therese thought about how she’d walked to the perfume department of the store and found the fragrance Carol wore. She’d smelled it and dabbed it on her own wrists and neck, and inquired shyly about how much it cost. But even the smallest bottle was more expensive than she could afford, more expensive than the green, silk dress she’d bought and hung in her closet a week earlier.

“On the contrary, Kitten,” Carol purred.

“Shall we put on a record?” Therese asked, more suddenly than she intended.

“Aha, a subject change. Fair enough. You find a song for us. I just thought of something and I’ll be right back.” She got up and left the room, padding silently across the floor in her stocking feet. She’d kicked off her shoes to fold her legs under her on the couch, and did not bother to put them back on as she walked away from Therese, with quick little steps much like a ballerina, Therese thought. Therese looked down into the hollow caves of Carol’s shoes, then redirected her attention to the task at hand. She flipped through records trying to find something light and distracting, something to clear the air. She settled on the Clovers and put it on the player, but her fingers were shaking and she almost scratched the vinyl as she set the needle onto it. Carol returned to the room carrying a hand mirror and a small, black box. She sat down on the couch and patted the cushion next to her. “Come here,” she said. Therese settled herself back on the couch next to Carol. “Now, close your eyes. I have a surprise for you.” Therese obliged with a helpless smile. She felt Carol move in slightly closer to her. “Don’t open them!” Carol said and Therese squeezed her eyes shut a bit more, proving that there would be no peeking whatsoever.

Therese felt Carol’s fingers come up to her chin and angle her head toward one side. She caught a drift of Carol’s perfume on her wrist, as it was so close to her face, and tried not to inhale so obviously at its fresh spiciness. _Green_ , Therese thought. _You smell green, Carol._

Carol took out the little pearl earring Therese wore, then repeated the process on the other side. Therese heard the subtle creak of the hinges on the little box Carol had brought down with her, and figured it was being opened. Again, Carol’s hands came to Therese’s ears. Therese felt the coolness of metal slide into one lobe, and then the other, in contrast with the warmth of Carol’s fingertips as they gently stroked her ears, settling the mysterious jewelry on Therese. Carol tucked Therese’s hair behind her ears, and then her hands grazed Therese’s neck and shoulders as they made their journey back from Therese’s body to her own lap. “Beautiful,” she whispered and Therese felt Carol’s breath on the bridge of her nose. “You can open now,” Carol said at last.

Therese opened her eyes and found Carol sitting before her with a strange expression on her face, an odd mix of contentment and confusion, perhaps, indicated by a sweet twitch of her lips and a slight furrow in her brow. Carol held out the mirror to Therese. Therese took the mirror and peered into it. She gasped as she saw the emeralds dangling from her ears. “Oh, Carol. They’re beautiful!” She exhaled in a gush and realized she’d been holding her breath.

“Well, they’re yours now,” Carol replied.

“I couldn’t possibly,” Therese began.

“You can and you will,” Carol interrupted.

“But, they must be special to you. Were they from Harge?”

“Heavens no! Give you jewelry from Harge? Really, Therese, of all the things,” Carol muttered and then added, “I bought them for myself at one point and never wore them. They look as though they were meant for you. Could it be possible I bought them for you and just didn’t know it yet?”

Therese lowered the mirror and forced herself to close her mouth, which she realized was hanging open in overwhelmed awe. Carol’s touch, the earrings, her words, her breath on Therese’s skin mingling with her perfume-- it was all almost too much. Finally, she managed to say, “Thank you.”

“No, Darling,” Carol said.  “Thank you.”  She reached for Therese’s hand and squeezed it, then brought it up to her lips and kissed it in a gesture that was as fleeting as it was tender.  “Now you’ll have something green to wear with your fancy dress.”  She smiled and looked immensely satisfied with herself.  It made Therese smile, and surprisingly, set her heart at ease.    


	6. No Contact

The phone rang between twenty five and thirty times before she picked it up. Carol lay on her bed, an arm over her forehead like a languishing maiden, and listened to the sound of it, like an exotic bird, calling out, mocking her. When she could no longer stand it, she tossed her legs over the side of the bed, snatched the receiver, and brought it to her ear.

Neither of them spoke.

It had become a nightly ritual. It rang mostly late, past the time one would expect for the phone to ring.

Sometimes they sat on their respective ends of the line, breathing, and hearing one another breathe.

Once, Carol heard noises in the background on Therese’s end, bottles clinking, muffled voices, and music playing, and she guessed there was a party going on in Therese’s building. It made her smile, involuntarily, thinking of a little young hearted merriment, until her mind settled on an image of Therese with dark circles under her eyes standing in the hall of her apartment building, holding the phone limply to her ear, possibly even crying. And then, gripped by this sullen image, Carol’s face fell and her throat was seized by a sob.

She hung up the phone.

She rolled onto her stomach on her bed and wept into her pillow until her head hurt, then she chastised herself for being so selfish. Her heart had been broken a handful of times before, and this was by far the worst of it, but she knew whatever she was feeling, Therese was feeling tenfold, for the first time, and without the benefit of wisdom or grace of perspective. “My poor, sweet love,” she whispered into the darkness, longing to believe that her words would somehow reach Therese and salve the raw and tender breaks and burns. Carol’s fingers stroked the damp satin of her pillow sham, not caring that it was now soiled, permanently stained with the salt of her tears. “It will be better,” she whispered. Again, she willed her words to Therese, even as she rejected them in disbelief herself. “It will be better, my Dearest.”

Carol fell asleep like that, and woke sometime before dawn with swollen eyes. She’d not taken off her makeup and when she rose and looked in the mirror she found her eyes were caked with black mascara, and there were streaks of it down her cheeks as well, a macabre war paint, suitable for the battle she waged within her heart. She climbed back into bed and slept again for another fitful hour or two.

And so the night passed.

Then another night passed in the same manner. And another.

Carol never spoke as she pressed the phone to her ear and received Therese’s breath like a blessing into her brain. She never uttered a word, but there were times Therese spoke. There was the time Therese whispered, “I miss you. Carol, I miss you. I miss you so much.” Her voice was clear and innocent and so sweet, so completely earnest. She could never have known how the sound of it tore Carol apart like a thin sheet of paper and sent her flying in a hundred tattered pieces out the window, carried her on the night air to a lake where she landed and dissolved into nothing. Even that was more than Carol felt she deserved.

There were other times, other words. _I need you. Please come back. I ate an orange today and it made me think of you.  Say something! I love you. I developed our photos. Remember the day we walked through Chicago?_

But she spoke only to a stone of silence, as though she were speaking to someone through the grave. It wasn’t that Carol had no words. She had plenty; and they all echoed Therese’s. But they were bit back until her lower lip bled. Every time Therese spoke, Carol hung up the phone, sometimes silently other times with a clatter that bordered on fierce. And every time she would shake her head and mutter at the phone, “I can’t hear you. I just can’t.” And every time she wept.

Carol considered packing her bags and going back up to Vermont. She’d tell Abby in no uncertain terms not to disclose her location. Then she could know a few weeks of peace. She went as far as to bring out her suitcases. She went a step further and opened them. But then she walked away from them. She left them in the middle of her room, open and empty as though they were caught in endless yawn.

That night she let the phone ring thirty seven times before she picked it up. She held it against her chest for five seconds before she put it back down on the receiver.

The next night the phone rang twenty three times and then stopped before Carol could pick it up. Then a few nights passed without any calls. The calls grew more intermittent and then sparse. Then they ceased entirely.

After a few nights of silence and no contact, Carol lay on her back in her bed, her hands pressed over her heart. It crossed her mind to whisper _I miss you_ , up into the quiet night. But instead she said, “I release you,” and closed her tearless eyes to the ceiling.


	7. Little Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains some very fluffy sexual material. . . if this is not your jam, please feel free to skip it. It's really on the more M side of E, as I am pretty tentative to do anything super smutty with these two precious loves...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You. Guys. I love you all. I cannot even believe what a great and supportive fandom this is. My last chapter was pretty angsty and I guess it made a few of you cry (sorry...), but I can't even believe the warmth and genuine enthusiasm with which it was read and received. I think it is just because so many of us can resonate so deeply with broken hearts. . . Anyway, I wanted to reward you with some sexy fluff. Like it's really so fluffy it is almost not very good writing, and for that I apologize in advance, but I like to offer a variety of stuff and not get too mired down in my angst. (For those of you who have read my other stuff, you know I do angst with a vengeance...) So much love to all of you, and I hope you enjoy this chapter. Please let me know. xxxooo.

For a moment she thought she lost consciousness, and maybe she did.

She came back into herself as though someone were playing a movie backwards. It was as though someone had dropped a pebble into a pond and filmed all the circles widening out from the spot where the rock had broken through the water, then rewound it and made all the circles ripple back into the center. _What an odd thing to think and feel_ , Therese thought, even as she felt it. _Is this how people think and feel as they are about to die_? She wondered. Because surely this feeling was the ripping open of her mortal soul into the next whatever.

It did not hurt. In fact, it felt exquisite as she left her body and floated up toward the light on wave after wave of billowing pleasure. The circles expanded out in ever widening ripples on the water’s surface, and then collected themselves back in.

She took a breath, and then another. She was not dead. In fact, she was quite alive.

Her body settled, stopped its almost violent quivering, after some moments. Carol held her fast and did not let her go, as if she knew Therese would need this touch, this tether. Eventually, Therese released her grasp on Carol only slightly so Carol could slide into a spot next to her. Their arms came about one another in a complex but comforting cradle. Therese’s heart slowed along with her respiration, and she realized she was limp as a doll in Carol’s arms. She looked around the hotel room, which was brightening with morning light, and then to Carol, and then back around the room. Carol propped herself up on her elbow and peered down at Therese. She brushed the hair off of Therese’s face and stroked her cheek.

“What a wild little look, Darling,” she whispered. “Are you alright?”

“What. . .” Therese gasped, almost unable to finish the sentence. “What was that?”

Carol looked around the room, as if Therese had possibly seen or heard something concerning which escaped Carol’s attention. “What was what, exactly?”

“That what just happened. What I felt. I thought. . . Well, I thought maybe I was about to die.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth she realized they sounded foolish, and she felt even more foolish as she saw the smile spread over Carol’s face.

“Oh, Therese,” Carol said and lowered her face to kiss Therese on her lips. “Have you never- oh, you sweet - well, nevermind. You were not about to die, Baby. We just made love.”

“And that’s how it feels?”

“Yes.”

“That’s how it’s supposed to feel?”

“Well, yes, of course. Unless, well, I didn’t hurt you or anything, did I?” Carol said, her face awash with concern.

“No. Not at all,” Therese said and indulged her hands in stroking down the length of Carol’s back and over her hip.

“Did you like it?” Carol asked against Therese’s forehead, and there was a slight undercurrent of insecurity in her voice.

“Well, yes,” Therese sighed. “Yes. I liked it very much. It was just so. . . I don’t even know how to describe it.”

“Mmmm,” Carol murmured, as though satisfied with the answer. “Well, then, shall I make you feel that way again so you can figure it out how better to describe it?” They giggled and smiled against one another’s lips.

“I think that would be wonderful,” Therese whispered. Then she thought of something and felt uncertain again. “Um?” She began awkwardly.

“Yes? What is it, Therese?”

“I don’t know if I should ask.”

“You can ask me anything. There’s nothing between us now.” Carol brushed her lips over Therese’s forehead.

“Did I make you feel that way?” She whispered the question with her eyes closed, surprised she would feel so shy after something so bold had just occurred.

Carol nuzzled under Therese’s chin and purred into her ear, “Yes. You definitely did.”

“But I didn’t even do anything. I mean, I didn’t even know what I was doing or what was happening.”

“You didn’t have to,” Carol sighed. “I’ve been waiting and wanting for so long. Just being so close to you was enough. And all this gorgeous skin. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.” Her hand trailed down Therese’s torso, between her breasts, which made Therese arch her back instinctively. Carol’s hand went further, down over Therese’s belly, over her mound and into her folds which were still slick and sticky. She easily slipped a finger into Therese. As she did this with her finger, she kissed Therese and parted her lips so her tongue slid into her mouth, silky and warm. She parted from the kiss just far enough to whisper in Therese’s ear, “I could come for you, just from touching you here. And I could easily slip my hand in this pretty, satin pocket and live here forever, my love.”

“Carol, I love you.” She whispered into Carol’s hair which was in her face and was white in the sun. Therese closed her eyes and a strand of it scratched under one of her lids, but she did not open her eyes, instead rotated her hips and kissed Carol deeper.

“I love you, Therese.” Carol whispered back and there was a sense of awe in her voice. Therese opened her eyes to admire the blinding beauty of Carol in the sunlight, her skin glowing with the morning, her eyes almost translucent.

“I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving you, Carol. I don’t think I could now even if I tried.” She moved her hips up to gather Carol’s fingers deeper inside of her.

“I know. Me too.” Carol said this and Therese suddenly realized Carol was straddling her thigh, riding her as she gently plunged her fingers into Therese’s soaking flesh. Therese started to close her eyes and turn her head, but Carol said, “Stay with me this time,” and so she opened her eyes again.

“And now, we’re lovers?” Therese panted and brought her hand up to clutch at Carol’s neck, to pull her pretty face down closer to her own until their foreheads touched as they rode each other and the entire world became their eyes.

“Yes, I suppose we are. Although really I think we always have been. Don’t you?”

“Yes,” Therese whispered and closed her eyes against the light but continued to feel it on her eyelids and even on her lips as she smiled. “I do.”


	8. Sweetness, or the Spare Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a tiny nugget. . . Remember these chapters are not in any particular order, so this takes place more or less before the trip in the beginning of Therese and Carol's relationship. Sorry if that is confusing. . . I kind of just write and explore things as the images come to me, and this was something I just felt moved to do... So sorry it's been a while since I updated this. Real life has a way of getting in the way. Thanks to all of you for your amazing comments and continuing to read! xoxoxo.

“You’re looking sleepy,” Carol said as she placed the tea things back onto the tray. Therese was curled on the couch, her head resting on her arm. She was, in fact, quite sleepy. “It’s too late and you’re much too drowsy anyway to take a train all the way back to the city. You should stay here tonight.” 

“Oh, no,” Therese sighed. She stretched out her legs and sat up. “I don’t want to be a bother. I’ll be perfectly fine to take the train.” 

“Nonsense,” Carol snapped, but she smiled almost indulgently as she said it. “You could never be a bother. You’ll be perfectly comfortable in the spare room. Why don’t you go up and have a bath. Your nightdress is still on the back of the door. I’ll bring up some milk for you.” 

“Well,” Therese said slowly, “If you insist.”

“I insist,” Carol said. “I absolutely insist.” 

“Alright then.” 

“Hot or cold?” 

“Hm?”

“Your milk? Would you like it warmed up or just cold?” 

“Well, how do you like yours?”

“I like it warmed up.” 

“I’ll have it the same as you, then,” Therese said. She stood from the couch and made her way to the staircase. It wasn’t the first time she’d stayed in what Carol referred to as the “spare” room. It had been Harge’s room, but now he was gone. It no longer bore his name, this room that Therese entered silently as a cat. But it did have a spareness about it. It was an angular and masculine room, lacking in embellishment or feminine charm. Therese noted the spareness, but found she really didn’t care one way or another. 

She didn’t bother to shut the door all the way behind her. She and Carol were the only people in the house. She unbuttoned her woolen jumper and slipped out of it, then her blouse. She laid them tidily on the foot of the bed, then walked in her slip into the adjoining bathroom. 

She opened the taps and filled the tub with steaming water. She typically bathed in a tub of plain water and used the bar of soap to wash herself. But tonight, she noticed a bottle of bubble bath had been left on the edge of the tub. She opened it, sniffed at the sudsy liquid, and then poured a few drops into her bath. She shed her slip and stepped into the tub. She sank into the soapy water. 

It smelled like Carol. 

It was not Carol’s perfume, not exactly. It was more the fragrance under Carol’s perfume, the scent of her skin, fresh and fleshy and floral. It rendered Therese at once alert and intoxicated as she leaned back against the tub. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to relax but finding herself distracted by the sensation of her nipples becoming almost painfully wrinkled and erect as they poked up from the water into the cooler air of the bathroom. She swept some of the warm bathwater up over her chest, trying to quell the discomfort, but finding it did little to help. She squirmed a bit in the water, and found other areas of her body tingling. She ran her hands down her chest, over her breasts then her belly and further down to her thighs. 

Closing her eyes, she allowed her fingers to probe into the spot between her legs where there was a feeling of prickling pressure. She stroked herself, then pressed down, lightly at first and then a little harder, thinking there must be some way she could find relief from this agony. But was it agony? She couldn’t quite be certain. Her fingers continued their exploration under the water, creating little ripples on the surface as she quivered and trembled in response. 

A soft knock at the door startled her. She jerked her hand away with a splash. “Yes,” she called. 

“Don’t fall asleep in there, sleepy head,” Carol said, her voice muffled behind the door. 

“No. I won’t,” Therese said. She sat up in the tub. “I’m just finishing up now.” She stood up and grabbed the towel, wrapped it around her and pulled the stopper out of the drain. Gravity sucked the water out of the tub with a shameless gurgle. Therese dried herself and pulled the nightgown that had been left on the back of the bathroom door down over her head. She opened the door and stepped back out into the spare room. Carol was sitting on the edge of her bed. 

“I’ll tuck you in and say goodnight,” she declared. She pulled back the covers for Therese and smoothed her hand over the bed. Therese climbed in and smiled as Carol pulled the covers back up over her. “Are you warm enough?” 

“Yes. Fine. Thank you.” 

“But, Sweetness, you’re shivering,” Carol said as she took Therese’s hands in her own. 

“Not at all,” Therese said and squeezed Carol’s hands to reassure her. 

“Here,” Carol said and pressed a mug of warm milk into Therese’s hands. “Drink your milk. It’ll warm you right up.” Therese sipped at the milk which was heated and sweetened with a bit of honey. 

“Thank you. This is lovely.” 

“You’re not feeling ill are you?” 

“No. Just tired.” 

“Alright then. Lie down. There’s a good girl.” Carol took the mug from Therese. 

Therese put her head on the pillow and smiled up at Carol. “Thank you,” she whispered. 

“Sweet dreams, my sweetness,” Carol said and kissed Therese’s forehead. She got up from the bed and walked across the floor, then out the door of the spare room.


	9. Between the Pages

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A love letter. . .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it's been a while since I've updated these little missives. I hope you all enjoy this. I love to write love letters and found myself inspired all of a sudden. As always, thank you from my deepest heart space for your time and generosity in reading and commenting. This is my favorite fandom. Writing for you is such a joy because you are the most amazing and kind readers. . . xoxoxo.

My Love,

Even as I begin this letter, I wonder how it can be I am so tempted to refer to you as ‘ my love’. What strange desire has driven to me to such lengths? How can it even be that my brain would conjure such a connection? And yet, it does. I know beyond any doubt that you are my Love. My only Love. My true and real and all encompassing Love. 

It has happened quickly. The world is now transformed because I know you, because you have found and seen me. It was as if, in that first moment, your gaze captured me like a butterfly, pinned and mounted me on a little square of velvet, and made me your own. How still I would stay for you, always, if it would charm you in any way. 

I wonder if you would ever want such a thing. I wonder if you would ever feel this way- how I feel that you inhabit me, that you are with me in some unusual fashion every moment of every day. Perhaps I have gone mad. If I have gone mad, I don’t care because to know you and to have been seen by you is the only thing for which my life has truly been lived to this point. 

Your eyes follow me everywhere now, as though you are this ethereal and voyeuristic angel, watching me do everything. You watch me sit on the train with my hands in my lap, trying to stay still but twitching restlessly because I am thinking of you. You watch me ride my bike to work and catch the foolish grin I try to hide as I remember the sensation of your hand brushing my shoulder as I played the piano for you at your home last week. You watch me open a can of beer and sip at it over the sink. You watch me stand there in bare feet eating cheese and crackers. You watch me push Richard away, and you watch me climb into my small bed alone. Your eyes embrace me as I curl under the covers and try to stay awake so I can be consciously holding you in my thoughts for just a few moments more. 

Do my movements in the world please you, I want to know? Because I very much want to please you. Oh, how I want to please you with every pathetic ounce of my puerile and mundane soul. How I want to fill your exotic, gray eyes with the love and longing I feel flashing in every nerve of my body. 

At times, I almost get the sense you feel the same as I do. It seems as though a familiar energy flows between us, connecting us to some sacred and constant secret that only we share. In those moments, I am so very certain you feel it too, but then the moment passes and I am quite sure such a connection would be utterly unnatural and impossible. How could someone like you possibly feel something so rare and bizarre for someone like me? How could my vows of affection exist anywhere besides on this sheet, which will no doubt be tucked between the pages of a book and forgotten, or remembered only to be wept over later? 

If I could command my brain to make a dream for me, I would make it play our song deep in the cavern of my sleep. In this dream, you would gather me to you, and we would dance together, so close in each other’s arms it would become impossible to know where you ended and I began. If only I could hold you like this, even for a moment, even in my dreams. If only I could feel what you feel and know with every certainty that you are the same as me. I would bring your hand to my lips and kiss it while looking into your eyes, and without words, I would tell you everything in the instant before I woke. 

The thought of holding your hand in my own makes me almost wild. As I sit here writing, I am seized with the urge to throw and smash things in a fervor I don’t even understand. But I know I can’t do that, so I sit painfully still, chewing on my lips, longing to know what you are doing and thinking this very moment. I wonder with what your hands are occupying themselves and it drives me half mad. No doubt you would think me quite foolish for being so impulsive and impassioned, or you would blame it on my youth. And yet my love for you does not feel young. Youth seems to imply silliness and weakness. This adoration feels so serious and strong, as though it could crush and kill me. 

I want to tell you all these things. I want to tell you that I don’t know how I lived a day of my life without you, and I am terrified of living another day without you. If I could live for a hundred years, I would want to see you every day and it would still not be enough to make me tire of you. 

I want to tell you how beautiful you are to me. I want to tell you that every day you mystify me by becoming more and more beautiful than I remembered you were the day before and I don’t know how this is possible. 

I want to tell you I imagine us growing old together, eating breakfast and chatting about how we will drive out into the country later in the day. Perhaps we will travel to places together that we have never, ever been or even dreamed of going. I want to tell you how silly I know my dreams are and how foolish I feel for having them, but they feel important and dear and precious because at times they are all I have of you. 

I want to tell you how when I hear music, it fills me with a keen sense of connection to you, almost as though you possess me. I close my eyes and it is like you move through me. 

I want to feel your cheek pressed against mine, to feel the luxurious sweetness of your skin. I would whisper “Are you scared?” and you would reply, “No. Not at all. Not in the slightest,” because what we share would make us real and brave and strong. 

I want to tell you all these things, but mostly I want to tell you that you are my Love and I love you and I will never stop. I do not know how this is possible, but I do know it is true. You exist in me like a star and even if you left me or died or never wanted to know me again, your light would take a million years to fade. 

So although I tuck these words between the pages of a book, and you will likely never hear or read them, they exist, and I am faithfully and forever yours, 

T.


	10. Hands on the Wheel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a little glimpse of a moment. . .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I've been away for so long... You know how life is. And I'm sorry this is so short, but I wanted to post something just to get back into the flow of things. Your comments are sooooooo motivating, so thank you ever so much my darlings, and keep them coming! Hopefully more chapters, and longer ones will come soon. xoxoxo.

Therese was getting the hang of driving. It wasn’t even so hard. Not really. Carol had been a relaxed and thorough instructor, and Therese an apt student. 

Carol seemed utterly at ease on the passenger side of the roomy vehicle. Therese drove down the long stretch of highway. She picked up speed. She remembered the first time she’d been in the car with Carol and they had driven through the Lincoln tunnel. She’d had a vision of them dying in a car wreck, together, their bodies flung and broken on top of one another. It was the most peaceful she’d ever felt, at the time, imagining that, their bodies being brought out together, and laid side by side, almost touching on the pavement. 

She smiled as she thought of it. Strange, how a new sense of peace had found her, even as it made her heart race. 

“What are you thinking about?” Carol asked, jolting Therese from her bizarre dream. 

“Nothing,” Therese said, but she was still smiling. 

“Oh, I think you’re telling a tall tale with your little nothing, my darling,” Carol sighed. Therese shook her head. “No? Well never mind then,” Carol said. “Anyway, you do a competent job of distracting me from my inquisition.” 

“Oh? And how’s that?” 

“Your hands on the wheel. Your pretty hands.” 

“You’re distracted by my hands?” Therese almost snorted incredulously. 

“Quite,” Carol said. Although Therese was not looking at Carol, she could tell Carol had that sly little smile stretched over her closed lips. She reached for Therese’s hand and grabbed it from the steering wheel. Therese snatched it back and replaced it on the wheel. “Now, that’s just mean,” Carol growled. “Give it back.” 

“No.” Therese dared. 

“Yes. Give it back.” Carol’s voice was demanding, but playful. 

“I won’t,” Therese giggled and tightened her grasp on the steering wheel. 

“You will,” Carol said. Carol removed her fawn-colored, leather glove, and placed her hand palm up on her thigh. Therese looked down and saw it there, expectantly waiting for her own to join it. Therese swallowed hard and lost her smile for a moment. She bit her lower lip and looked back at the road. 

“Say please,” she whispered, and she whispered it because she could make her voice do no more. 

“Ahhh,” Carol purred. “Please. Please then.”

“Please what?”

“Please give me your hand, Therese.”

“Why?”

“Because I want it. I want to hold your hand.” 

“Very well,” Therese said and her smile returned, so much so that her nose crinkled. She blushed so hard she thought for a moment she would lose sight of the road. She lowered her hand into Carol’s. Carol wove their fingers together and then brought Therese’s fingers to her lips. She pressed Therese’s fingers against the heat of her mouth and then gently bit the knuckle of Therese’s middle finger. Her tongue flicked out against Therese’s flesh for but a moment. Therese gasped and looked about wildly for a place to pull the car over, certain that if she did not pull the car over she would crash it. 

“Easy,” Carol said. Therese caught her breath and her composure. She drove on. Carol squeezed her hand again and lowered it to her lap. Carol settled back against the seat, her head relaxed back, but turned so she could watch Therese. Her thumb stroked over Therese’s index finger with a tenderness that was light and almost lazy. “There now. There’s my girl,” she said softly as Therese drove on.


	11. Unbreakable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Therese and Carol meet to hash things out and repair and rebuild?

“Are you hungry?” Carol asked. “I could see what’s in the fridge. Or we could go out?” 

“No,” Therese answered. 

For a moment they were quiet. They sat on opposite ends of the parlor. It was a spacious room, and Therese imagined that during the day there would be plenty of light streaming in from the high windows. It was not as large as the living room in Carol’s old house, but it was lovely. It had been decorated and furnished with Carol’s touch. Everything about it whispered Carol’s name as though it were a breeze rippling through meadow grasses. Therese’s eye was drawn to a rather large and spectacular vase on the mantle. It was a delicate shade of violet with specks of amber throughout the glass, which had been blown in wide waves. 

Carol. 

Something about the violet and amber brought Therese back to a night in a hotel room. Carol was on top of her, their foreheads pressed together, and all the world was Carol’s eyes, huge and glittering in the darkness. Therese had felt sucked into Carol’s eyes, even as she felt her fingers and tongue and other parts of her being sucked into Carol like she was a force of nature. It had been thrilling to be so caught and delirious. Therese had arched her back up so she could force herself even farther into Carol than she had ever imagined possible, all the while trapped in her eyes like a little bug in amber. She shivered now, remembering it. 

Carol crossed and uncrossed her legs and picked up her drink. The motion brought Therese back to the room. She looked at Carol as Carol sipped her drink and cleared her throat. “Where are you, Therese?” 

“Nowhere. Here.”

“I felt you went away for a moment or so.” 

“No, Carol,” Therese said, and her voice was steady although she had to clasp her hands on her lap because they shook. “I’m not the one who goes away. Remember?” Therese held Carol’s azure gaze until Carol finally had to break it. 

“Therese,” Carol began. “I know I have caused you so much distress. Words can’t begin--” she broke off abruptly and closed her eyes. She stood and walked to the window, her back to Therese. 

“Distress is a tidy word. You broke my heart Carol. You broke me.” 

Carol turned. There were tears in her eyes and a very sad smile on her lips. She put a hand on her chest and said, “No. My love, I hurt you. This is true and I am so, so sorry. But I did not break you. Look at you. You have become so sturdy and successful and you did that without or in spite of anything I ever did. Darling, you are unbreakable.” Carol looked at Therese as she sat there, tiny and fierce, on her newly upholstered sofa. There was still so much pain and confusion in her eyes, but she was there. It was a start. Carol realized she had been holding her breath, and as she lowered her hand from her chest, she exhaled in what was half sigh, half sob. Everything she had ever felt, or would ever feel for the woman before her bloomed and raged in her and urged her to go to Therese, to sit near her, to take her hands in her own and kiss them and beg her forgiveness. But something in Therese’s eyes told her to stay put, to keep the safe and respectful distance between them least she frighten her fragile, unbreakable bird away forever. 

“Therese,” she whispered at last. “Will you ever forgive me? I know I have no right to ask, and yet I have to. Will you ever forgive me for leaving you, for the space I put between us when I felt there was no other way? I know things won’t be the same, and maybe you’ll leave me forever now too, but I have to know one way or the other, will you forgive me?” Her knuckles were white as she clung to the back of the chair that was between her and her love like a shield. They were frozen there, in the cushion of the chair. She could not even bring them to move to wipe away the tears that were streaming down her cheeks. 

It did not take long for Therese to reply. Even in her residual pain, she could hardly bear the sight of Carol in this state. Her voice was clear, but this time it did shake slightly, “I forgave you a long time ago,” she said softly. 

“Oh,” Carol gasped and for a moment, as she collected herself, this was the only utterance she could manage. And then, “Thank you.” 

“You’re welcome,” Therese said with a little shrug. The innocence of the gesture melted some of the tension in the room and Carol chuckled. “What? You’re laughing at me?” 

“No. No. Not at all. It’s just. . . oh Therese. Do you have any idea how much I love you?” 

“No. Why don’t you tell me.” Therese shifted position slightly on the couch and there was an almost playful demeanor in her voice. 

“I don’t even know if I could find the words right now,” Carol sighed. 

“Then why don’t you show me.” 

“That, I believe I can do,” Carol murmured. She finally let go of the back of the chair and bridged the gap between her and Therese. When she stood squarely in front of Therese, she reached down and took Therese’s face in her hands. Cupping it lightly, tenderly, as though holding the most precious artifact in the universe, she tipped it up toward her. As she lowered her lips to meet Therese’s both of them kept their eyes open, until the very last moment when they gave into the warmth of their first kiss in forever. They closed their eyes. Therese brought her hands to Carol’s hips and pulled her closer in what felt like an unbreakable embrace.


	12. Delicate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW. . . Oh how I do love some good make up loving. . . and snow. . . and these two. I'd like to dedicate this chapter to the beautiful ladies of the Facebook Carol Movie group, especially one, who was really hoping for another chapter of this fic. She ended up providing me with some inadvertent inspiration and has all my gratitude, and also apologies for whatever went wrong. I believe she knows who she is. . .

The rain had long since turned into snow. 

It fell in delicate wisps over the water and sand. From time to time a healthy breath of wind would pick it up and play with it, making it swirl and spin. 

They sat in the car, above the dunes of the deserted beach, passing a flask of wine back and forth between them. 

“What shall I bring,” Therese had asked on the phone earlier that morning. “White or red?” 

“Red,” Carol had answered definitively. “Always red.” 

Several weeks of silence had passed between them, since their awkward reunion. Carol had honored Therese’s wish for space until she could stand it no longer. She had called her and asked her to go for a drive out to the ocean, to talk and maybe snack a little on a picnic Carol would prepare. Therese had offered to bring something to drink. Her question was a redundant little test, of course. She knew Carol would want red wine. 

There was a sweet comfort in the familiarity of Carol’s predictable answer. 

So they drove to a spot and then sat and nibbled on cold chicken and slices of bread from the bakery Carol loved. Such good bread, butter would cheapen it, she always said. They chatted about normal things, work and food and Rindy and plans for the holiday. They chatted in such a way it made their reconciliation seem like nothing at all, like there had never been a rift that needed healing with such surgical precision. But the second each of them let down their guard, in the space of silence it took to smile, there would be a remembering and the smile would fade and be replaced with a flicker of pain from someplace deep in their eyes. It would be followed with a hard swallow or a clearing of the throat and an urge to do something with their hands. 

Carol had turned off the car’s engine some time ago, but it was still warm, almost balmy. The heat of their bodies coupled with the heat leftover in the car. The windows were foggy and half covered with snow. The air thickened with the fragrance of wine, the damp wool of Therese’s coat, and the tangy green smell of Carol’s perfume. Therese felt lightheaded, moreso from the other factors than the wine itself, although the alcohol buzzed in her brain and curled happily in her throat as she swallowed it down in smiling gulps. It overwhelmed the senses and she rolled down her window to get some fresh air. With the window down, the crash of the waves could clearly be heard, but there was a weird silence to the rest of the world. 

“Baby doll,” Carol said. Her voice was low, almost stern, but Therese could tell without even looking that Carol was smiling as she spoke, “You’ll catch cold. Roll that window up.” 

Therese turned to Carol. “Listen,” she whispered and pointed a finger up at the roof of the car.

“What? What is it? I don’t hear anything.” 

“Exactly,” Therese sighed. “Isn’t the sound of snow magical for its silence?” 

“Oh, my little doll,” Carol chuckled. “I do believe you’ve had enough wine.” 

“I’ve not had enough!” Therese said and her voice was suddenly fierce. She grabbed the flask from Carol and brought it to her lips, tossing it back and drinking deep and sloppy until red wine spilled on her chin and neck. She wiped at it in a jerky gesture and then huffed with righteous indignation. “Oh.” 

“Oh?” 

“Don’t do that, Carol.”

“Do what, exactly, Therese?” 

“Make me feel so young and stupid and inept.”

“I would never. That would never, ever be my intention. Come now. Give me that.” Carol reached and took the flask back from Therese. She took a discreet sip before screwing the top back on and placing it in the picnic basket between them. Carol knew it might still be some time before Therese would trust her again, before there would be an end to this weird back and forth of playfulness and fear, approach and avoidance. 

“Your intention?” Therese mumbled. 

“Mmmh?” 

“Well,” Therese said more firmly. “What exactly is your intention. You’ve never made that particularly clear. You left. You came back. And now. . . now I just feel adrift with you. Like those waves. Or the snow. Here you are. But you could melt and disappear at any moment. Or recede from the shore.” 

“Oh, Therese,” Carol said. “I’ve no desire to recede from you.” Carol reached over and took hold of the lapels of Therese’s coat, putting her hands to the task for which they had yearned. She pulled her closer, as close as she could, though the large wicker basket still sat between them like a patient corgi on the car seat. “Even this feels too far,” Carol hissed and crushed her mouth into Therese’s lips. She thrust her tongue between Therese’s lips to open her mouth and their teeth crashed momentarily against one another as they kissed. The wind howled through the cracked open window and Therese moaned as she brought her hand up to Carol’s cheek. “Oh my god,”Carol whimpered, and then whispered, “Make that sound again.”

“What sound?” Therese asked.

“That sound you just made when I kissed you. Make it again.” 

“I don’t know what it was though,” Therese said helplessly. 

“Make it,” Carol begged. “Oh for the love of everything, make that sound Therese!”

“Kiss me again,” Therese commanded, so Carol did, hard and long and deep, her tongue sweeping over the soft inner pouches of Therese’s cheeks and then searching back over Therese’s tongue as far as it could go. As she did this, she unbuttoned the first buttons of Therese’s coat, nearly tearing at them to get them to part so she could reach within and cup the soft curve of her breast through her sweater. She grabbed Therese’s hair in her fist, and pulled on it, gentle but firm, so Therese’s head arched back. Carol tore her lips from Therese’s mouth and descended to her neck, kissing and biting it as though starved. Therese panted heavily as she returned Carol’s embraces, but there was no noise. 

Carol pulled away and cupped Therese’s face in her hands. “How are you so perfect? So delicate. This look. This face.” 

Therese sat back and opened the car door. She swiftly got out and began to run down the dune onto the beach. For a moment, Carol sat there puzzled, her entire body humming with the wine and slick desire for the woman who just escaped from her car. She shook her head to clear it and then got out of the car. The air was thick with snow as she raced after Therese. She caught up to her at the water’s edge. 

“Hey you,” Carol gasped. “What’s all this then?” 

Therese turned from the horizon and looked at Carol. Carol stood there, breathless, hair blowing, fur coat open to the wind. Therese took a step in toward Carol and laced her arms around Carol’s waist, beneath her fur coat. She could feel the heat of her body on her bare hands. Carol instinctively looked around them. “There’s no one here,” Therese reassured her, softly. She felt Carol relax into the embrace. 

Carol shivered. “It’s frigid out here. Whatever possessed you to run down here, Therese?” 

“I wanted to see if you would follow me.”

“Well, I did. Didn’t I?” Carol said. She dropped a kiss on Therese’s forehead and put her hands on Therese’s hips. 

“You did,” Therese said. “But will you always?”

“I will. Always.”

“Always? And how far? How far will you come for me, Carol?” 

“Always and forever,” Carol murmured. “And to the ends of the earth.” Therese turned her back into Carol’s chest so that Carol held her and they both looked out over the sea. Carol pulled Therese in and attempted to wrap her as much as possible in the fur of her coat. She kissed Therese’s neck and as she did so, her hand found its way into Therese’s coat, and then down the waistband of Therese’s skirt. 

“Oh!” Therese gasped. “Your hand is so cold!”

“Well let me warm it up then,” Carol whispered as she stroked her palm over Therese’s soft, flat belly. Therese let her head fall back on Carol’s shoulder and tipped her face up so Carol could kiss her lips as her fingers walked their way lower and lower until they were lingering over a place that was so very warm and wet. Carol slid her fingers over and into Therese with a slow ease and precision as she kissed her. Therese moaned into Carol’s lips and Carol stopped in their kiss to say against her mouth, “That’s it. That’s the noise my love. Oh, I could come just from hearing you make that little noise.” 

“Oh, Carol. Oh, it’s not going to take me very long,” Therese said as she moved in a silky little undulation against Carol’s fingers. 

“Beautiful,” Carol whispered. “Do it then, if that’s what you want.”

“Oh, I do. I do,” Therese moaned. “But Carol?”

“Yes, Darling?” 

“I’ll be yours. I’ll belong to you.”

“Yes. Mine. I’m with you,” Carol replied. 

“If I feel this, you can’t hurt me again,” Therese begged, moving a bit faster against Carol’s fingers and licking almost wildly at Carol’s lips. 

“Never,” Carol sighed as she felt Therese’s inner muscles begin to clench around her fingers. “Oh, how I do love you,” she said as she brought on the climax and with it a burst of tumbling pulsations that made Therese nearly lose her footing, but Carol’s arm was firm around her and they stood together as the wind and snow whipped in wave after wave. 

Therese finally turned to Carol and put her arms around her. She looked up at her and she was smiling. They both were. And they both also realized how cold they suddenly were. “Can we go back to the car now?” Carol laughed. 

“Yes please,” Therese said. They stumbled back up the beach, arm in arm, fearless in their solitude. 

“I do believe I will take you home,” Carol said as they reached the car. They climbed in. Carol reached to brush snow off of Therese’s head. “You weren’t wearing a hat, my little snow fairy. I shall have to give you a hot bath and tuck you up with some warm blankets and tea. 

“I do believe I will enjoy that,” Therese said. Carol turned the car on and the wipers swished back and forth, clearing the window of fog and snow. Carol switched on the radio and found a station playing some old Ella Fitzgerald. They drove off, empty of sorrow and singing along with the radio.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all ever so much for reading and for taking the time to comment and be so generous with your love and time. This fic has come out of some very broken places in my life and your warm reception of it has been healing and helpful for me. You have all my love. xoxo. -- SS.


	13. Firefly Trails

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An intimate morning of basking in love. . . because who doesn't need to go there once in a while? This chapter is dedicated to all of the beautiful, strong, passionate women out there who have grown and stretched and who have the marks to prove it. I've always thought stretch marks were absolutely fascinating and beautiful, and people think I'm so weird for that, but oh well. 
> 
> Your comments fill my heart to bursting with love and happiness. Thank you all so much. I try to reply to everyone as quickly as possible, but sometimes life gets in the way and such... Just know that your words reach me and mean everything. xoxoxo.

Carol was still asleep when Therese woke. 

For some time, Therese lay there, completely still, listening to the steady rhythm of Carol’s breath. She was lying on her back and Carol was curled with her back to her in the double bed. They had been up late the night before after a long day on the road, and Carol had been wanting for her sleep. Therese hardly dared move, for fear of waking her. 

Eventually, Therese slid out of bed to go and use the bathroom. She splashed some water on her face and brushed her teeth, then considered her reflection. Her pajama pants were on straight enough, but her top had been buttoned haphazardly, buttons in wrong holes, so it bulged and buckled in a silly manner. She smiled, remembering how Carol had unbuttoned it so carefully the night before, and then how tired they were after their affections, and how carelessly Therese had buttoned it back up. She unbuttoned it again now, in front of the mirror, and carefully fixed the buttons so that they were correctly aligned, but she left the top three buttons undone, leaving visible a wide triangle of flesh. 

She slipped back into the hotel room and as quietly as possible got back into bed, this time, curled so she faced Carol’s back. Carol had not bothered to put on any pajamas, so her skin flashed like an ivory sculpture as Therese pulled back the covers and climbed in. She watched the steady rise and fall of Carol’s shoulders, and then considered each little bump of Carol’s spine, curved as it was like a gorgeous shell. Unable to help herself, she nuzzled her face into Carol’s back, inhaled deeply and kissed the velvet surface, her eyes rolling back and closing, as though in some rare form of supplication. The rhythm of Carol’s breath shifted, and she stirred, rolling back into Therese’s arms. Therese slipped her arm over Carol’s waist and Carol caught her hand, brought it to her lips, kissed it, moaned, and Therese could feel Carol smiling against her knuckles. 

“Well, good morning,” Carol grumbled. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.” 

“I’m glad you did. What time is it?” 

“Just past nine.”

“Oh dear. Half the day is gone!” Carol moved to sit up, but Therese pushed her back onto the pillow. She brushed the hair off Carol’s cheek and kissed it. 

“You were so tired, though,” Therese said. “Why don’t you sleep longer? I can get up and fetch us some juice and coffee and maybe some breakfast?” 

“No. No.”

“No?”

“No. I don’t want you to go and I don’t want to sleep anymore.” Carol yawned. 

“Are you certain?”

“Of course I am. Why on earth would I want to be asleep by myself when I can be awake with you?” She pulled Therese down and kissed her and as she did, her hand found its way up Therese’s night shirt. Therese blushed. 

“Fair enough,” Therese whispered against Carol’s mouth. “What shall we do today then?”

“Oh,” Carol murmured. “Don’t I have a few ideas?” She gently nudged Therese back so her hands could get at the buttons on Therese’s shirt, the very buttons that Therese had just set straight. Therese giggled. “These blasted things,” Carol hissed, but she was smiling as well. As she worked at the little buttons, Therese watched her face. She stroked one of Carol’s breasts and allowed her hand to travel down over Carol’s waist and hip. Her fingers indulged in the soft little mound of flesh over Carol’s abdomen. She pinched it and fondled it gently, exploring its silken perfection. Carol stopped what she was doing, and looked curiously at Therese. “What are you doing? Are you playing with my fat?” She seemed almost annoyed or uncomfortable. 

“What?” Therese gasped. “Fat? Oh my goodness. No! Look at you. You’re so beautiful. I wish I could take a picture of you like this. . . in the shadows. . . all your skin exposed. It is like you are completely vulnerable and fierce all at once. I don’t understand it, and yet, it’s here and I love it. You’re perfect.” Therese could barely get the words out, as she was nearly hypnotized, stroking the flesh of Carol’s belly. 

“You’re an odd little one, you know that? You’re really something else.” 

Therese looked up for a moment, and they both regarded each other a bit quizzically. “Well, I’m something else that is something yours. If that even makes sense.” 

“It does,” Carol sighed. “Oh, it does.” 

“Must I stop?” Therese asked. 

“I suppose not,” Carol conceded. So, Therese continued to adore the newfound territory on her lover’s body. As she considered the region, she noticed that there were a series of silver lines illustrating Carol’s stomach like delicate bolts of lightning, or white flames of fire. She traced them down lower until her fingers were lost in the hair between Carol’s legs. Carol inhaled sharply as Therese’s hand came back up, and her fingers spread out into the fine, filigree trails. 

“These marks,” Therese began. “They look magical.” 

“They are stretch marks,” Carol said. “From when I was with Rindy. Everything expands and you get all marked up, I’m afraid. It’s an ugly business, bearing babies.” 

“On the contrary,” Therese sighed. “They are lovely. They remind me of the trail a firefly might leave, or ripples on water. I could look at them all day.” 

“I don’t even know what to say to that,” Carol chuckled. She nipped at Therese’s neck and rolled her palm over her breast. 

“Does it hurt?” Therese asked, still mesmerized. 

“Hmm?”

“Having a baby?” 

“I suppose,” Carol replied. “I don’t remember the actual doing of it because I was sedated, mercifully. But afterwards, yes. I suppose it hurt, but not as much as other things.” 

Therese wondered what on earth could hurt more than having a whole human emerge from your own body, but she kept her question to herself because there was another part of her that just didn’t want to know. She scowled without realizing it, but Carol caught her at it and asked, “What’s with the frown?” 

“I’m not sure,” Therese began. “I’m confused. You have these marks because of Rindy, so she made them, but I want them. I want them to be mine.” Her heart was pinched with the weirdness of her jealousy and desire to claim Carol, every bit of her, every line and edge and curve. 

“Oh, Therese. You can have them. Why you would want them I haven’t the foggiest notion, but you are welcome to them.” Carol kissed Therese’s forehead. “And I’ve made you smile again, so all it well?” 

“Yes,” Therese grinned. “Thank you. All is well. But Carol?”

“What?”

“I would like to kiss you, here, on these marks,” Therese whispered, kneading Carol’s belly with her fingers. 

“Well do it then,” Carol whispered, her eyes narrowed from smiling. 

Therese crept down over Carol’s stomach and lowered her face so her lips hovered above her skin. She touched her lips to the area just beneath Carol’s navel, and stayed there, quite still for a long moment. And then with a very light tongue, she began to caress each little line. Carol moaned and arched her back. Therese slipped a hand under the small of Carol’s back, and her other hand down between Carol’s legs. But she left her mouth where it was, following each firefly trail with her lips and tongue and even her teeth, like they were paths that would lead to places where there was naught but love and warmth and bliss, where there would never be any knowledge of things that could hurt worse than the tearing apart of one human from another.


	14. Terror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carol muses about the fear of making oneself vulnerable to human relationship and connection. . . I am not happy with the title of this chapter and I may come back and revise it at some point, because I feel like there is something else that needs to be in it, but it is alluding me at the moment. And anyway, I wanted to put something up so I could touch base with you all, my lovelies. I was missing you. . . xoxoxo.

_There is terror in loving something tiny_ , Carol thinks.   

She can't tear her eyes from Therese’s fingers, which are curled around the stem of a wine glass.  Those fine, small fingers. They have surprising strength, but they are little just the same.

It almost stirs anger in her, this fear.  

Later, she will watch Therese hold a pencil while she sketches out ideas for a set on which she is working.  Therese will fiddle with the zipper at the nape of her neck, and will twirl a lock of hair around her index finger.  She won’t know Carol is watching, or that Carol feels half-mad with the perception of danger that shimmers in the air between them like an unpleasant mirage.  

 _We should have stayed home_ , Carol seeths.  

A young man approaches Therese, and says something that makes her laugh. Carol watches as Therese’s chin dips toward her chest in a shy gesture of cordiality.  It isn’t jealousy that makes Carol shove a cigarette in between her lips, nor is it anger that makes her light it with an abrupt flick. How can Therese not feel her eyes, burning hot and blue, over her shoulders and down to the small of her back.  

 _I should have kept her home, she thinks again._  It becomes a futile chant in her mind. To break the monotony, Carol snatches a glass of champagne from a tray that floats by her on the hand of a server.  She scowls at the fizzing bubbles and drains it tidily 

She has never felt this way before, has never felt so fiercely protective, not even of Rindy, and she certainly never gave half a fig whether Harge came or went.  With Abby there had been such a deep and abiding connection she never doubted it for a moment, or feared it would change or disappear. Even when there was distance between them, it was manageable.  It did not render Carol weak and gummy in the knees. There was an inherent trust that the universe would hold them, that they would return to her. But with Therese it is altogether different and terrible.   

No. It is not anger or bitterness or envy urging Carol to grab Therese’s tiny wrist and drag her from this insipid party.  

 It’s fear.  Sheer terror pounding through her veins.  She doesn't know how to make it stop.

There is terror in loving something so dainty, so small and fragile.  It could break. It could fall completely apart. It could slip silently away in its sleep and Carol would never know until it was too late.  She can barely breathe now. _That’s how it will happen,_ she thinks.  She feels it all starting to slip and she can not stand it.  She stubs out her cigarette and decides she will take her leave.  

She can hear the low murmur of Therese’s voice as she makes her way to the coat room.  She leans against the wall as the attendant gets her coat, and she considers writing a note to let Therese know she’s gone home.  But as she wraps her fur around her shoulders, she feels an almost animal desperation to be gone, and Therese is a smart girl; she will figure out that Carol has left.  Just the thought of running a hot bath at home has helped slow Carol’s heart some. She makes her way to the door.

“Hey,” she hears behind her.  She turns to find Therese, a concerned look over her pale face.  “Where were you? And where are you going?”

 “Home,” Carol says and tries to muster a smile.  

“Home?  Are you unwell?  It’s barely ten. That designer is here; the one I was telling you about?  He has a project he’s interested in hiring me for. I wanted you to meet him.”  

“I’m fine Therese.  I just want to go. That’s all.  You enjoy the rest of your evening.”  

Therese draws near enough to catch Carol’s hand in hers.  Carol looks around, but everyone seems so involved in their champagne, shrimp toast, and conversation that they take no notice of the two women as their fingers entwine.  “But you don’t seem alright. What’s going on here, Carol?”

Carol stows her clutch under her elbow so she can reach up and stroke Therese’s jaw with her index finger.  “My peculiar Darling,” Carol whispers and drops her hand. “It’s nothing.”

“It is something.  Tell me.”

 Carol pulls her hand away from Therese and crosses her arms over her chest.  She breathes in and exhales in a sharp sigh. It isn’t like her to be shaking so.  “You terrify me.”

“Carol.  I don’t understand,” Therese says, panic written into the flecks of her eyes.  

“No.  You wouldn’t.  That’s alright.”   Carol turns and starts to leave again, but Therese’s grasp on her forearm pulls her back.  Therese leads her into an empty room. She closes the door, then pushes Carol up against it as she puts her hands behind Carol’s neck and pulls her face down into an almost vicious kiss.  Carol grabs Therese at her waist and pulls her as close as she possibly can. There is a clatter as Carol’s clutch falls to the floor. Neither care. Therese’s fingers thread themselves into the hair at the nape of Carol’s neck and there is alarming strength in them.  Those tiny fingers. Carol moans and her fur slips off her shoulders as she jerks her knee in between Therese’s legs. She feels intoxicating warmth as Therese pulsates against her for a moment. They stop kissing and breathe heavily against one another. Therese strokes Carol’s face and then kisses her neck with a hunger Carol has not seen before.  

“Do I terrify you now?” Therese whispers.  

“No,” Carol answers.  “Actually not at all.”  Therese licks at Carol’s lips.  Carol moans again. She wants to get her hands under Therese’s blouse, but she is aware of the voices of strangers just on the other side of the door, and does not want to send Therese back out to the party a disheveled mess.  “You should go back to the crowd,” Carol sighs and straightens to create more space between them. It is suddenly cold. She stoops to gather her coat and purse from where they had fallen.

“I’ll get my coat,” Therese says.  “I want to go home with you.”

 “Oh Therese.  No. Go enjoy yourself.  I’m fine.”

“Wonderful.  Then we can go home and be fine together.”  Before Carol can say anything else, Therese disappears from the room.  Carol straightens her hair and then goes to wait by the door. It feels like she’s waiting an awfully long time, so long in fact, she begins to think maybe Therese changed her mind.   _Just as well,_ she thinks, and walks out the door into the crisp air.  It is a damp night in a winter that has gone on and on. _Maybe spring will never come,_ she thinks bitterly.  

“Call a cab for me, will you,” she asks the door man as she steps out onto the curb.  She breathes in the shocking air which at any rate is a welcome distraction from her raging heart.  

“Carol!” She hears and turns to find Therese hopping out the door and pulling her coat on all in one motion.  “I’m sorry, I got caught in a conversation.”

“I was beginning to think you’d changed your mind,” Carol says.

“Nope,” Therese grins and Carol wonders exactly how much wine she has had to drink.  “I’m here. I’m with you.”

As she feels Therese take her place by her side, it is tempting to allow the terror to creep back in, to threaten the sanctity of the sensation of the little arm weaving itself into her own.  It steadies her. Remarkably, Therese steadies her with her tiny arm.  Carol throws her head back and laughs out loud in spite of herself.  She looks down to find Therese beaming up at her and it is nearly impossible to resist kissing her wet, smiling lips.

“I’m here with you,” Therese says again.  

“So you are, Darling.  So you are.”


	15. Of Course I Care(d)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In case you ever wondered if your comments really do matter... I'd more or less given up on this fic, and then a sweetheart left some thoughtful comments this past weekend to let me know she missed me and these little chapters. So, here is just a little bit of a thing, just to check in with you all. It's not much, but just to get things flowing a bit again. I've been writing for the Wentworth fandom and am really loving what I am writing, but I totally miss the loving engagement of this fandom. You loves are really and truly like nothing else in the world and you all have my heart so fiercely. In terms of fandom and fic, you guys have been the absolute most kind and generous and all of your comments have been like eternal sunshine for me. This fic was born out of tremendous pain in my personal life, and that it was received with such love and tenderness has meant more to me than I'll ever really be able to express. I'm not exaggerating when I say I love you guys. 
> 
> Thank you for reading and for not giving up on me. Win7Wil, this one is for you. xoxo.

“May I come in?” Carol asked. Therese opened the door wide enough for Carol to come through into her apartment. “It’s been three days, Therese.” 

“So you can count.” 

“And you can’t return phone calls?” They stared at one another. Carol lowered her eyes first and turned away slightly from Therese. Her shoulders rose and lowered in a heavy sigh. Carol reached out absently to fondle the drooping leaf of a plant on a small table near the couch. “Look, I know you’re upset with me. But there is such a thing as common courtesy.” Carol looked back up at Therese who seemed to be seething with anger, taking short little breaths, her body almost fluttering. 

“Upset with you?” She exhaled. “Upset with you?” 

“Well aren’t you?” There was a long moment of silence during which Carol looked at Therese and Therese looked anywhere besides Carol. The bookshelf. The photographs tacked to the wall. The empty beer bottle that had been left on the table. That damn plant that seemed to be begging for water. “Can’t you even talk to me, Therese? Have you come to hate me that much?” 

“I don’t hate you, Carol,” Therese gushed all of a sudden. “I’m hurt. I’m hurting. I let you back in and you did it again and I feel like such a fool. I should have known! I should have known you would do this to me again!” 

“Darling,” Carol began and took a step toward Therese, her hand outstretched. “Please. Let’s be reasonable.” 

“No!” Therese’s voice came practically shrill, surprising them both as it pierced the space between them and drove Carol back. “Don’t even touch me.” 

Carol lowered her hand. “Alright then. I won’t touch you.” 

“Please just go.” 

“No. I won’t do that either.” 

“Of course you won’t! Why would you ever do anything I wanted or needed, Carol? When would you ever make a single concession for anyone other than yourself? Case in point- here you are! Stopping by my apartment uninvited and unannounced. I’m not allowed to come to you without a formal, engraved invitation but here you are, doing whatever you please when it pleases you!” 

“I deserve some anger, Therese. That is true. But you are not being entirely fair.”

Therese took a deep breath and nodded. For a moment, Carol thought she had collected her wits and was going to be reasonable. Then Therese said slowly and very softly, “Fair? Shall we talk about fair, Carol? Just about everything in my world stopped being fair when you boarded the plane in Des Moines to come back here and try to put your life back together. You looked back at me and you waved, and it was as though you were swatting any semblance of fairness away with your elegant, gloved hand.” At this, Therese balled her own hands up into fists and took a step closer to Carol. Therese’s face was pale, but her neck was flushed with her anger. Carol took all of this in. She looked down to Therese’s tiny, furious fists that looked as though they were ready to fly at her. But she did not step back. And she did not speak. She let Therese continue. “Do you have any clue how I suffered? How I wandered around that awful city, waiting to hear from you? Waiting to find out if you were coming back to me? How I laid awake in that awful room on that lumpy bed all alone? Waiting and wondering if you’d forgotten. Or if it was safe for me to come to you? I waited and I waited and I thought I would die I missed you so keenly! Had you any clue? Did you even care?” 

“Of course I cared,” Carol whispered. Her mouth had gone terribly dry. “I was sick for you too, Therese. Every day. There were a hundred things that made me think of you, that made me desperate for you. I’d go into a store and I’d see something and I’d think, ‘oh Therese would adore that’ but I couldn’t buy it for you and I couldn’t even tell you about it.”

“Well, no, you never told me. How awfully cruel of you to never tell me, to allow me to exist for weeks in such agony and then to return here to your silence and distance.” 

“Oh, Therese, my sweet. I suppose it was mean, but you know what I was up against. You know how it needed to be. You knew all about that from the very first.” 

“How very like you to take all of this and turn it all around on me now.” 

“Whatever do you mean?” 

“It’s as though you want to take my pain and make it my very own fault,” Therese spat. “God forbid the high and mighty Carol Aird ever be held accountable for anything!” 

“Absolutely not,” Carol said. Her tone was even, but her hands were beginning to shake. “That couldn’t be farther from the truth and I believe you know it. You’re angry with me because when you came to the apartment the other day, Harge was there and I couldn’t see you. You must know there is nothing between he and I besides our daughter. We were ironing out some of the visitation details regarding Rindy. You showed up with your flowers and it did not seem like it would bode well for me if I accepted a visit from my lover while I was trying to settle things with my ex. That’s all.”

“Oh is that all? 

“I was flustered. I’m sorry. I didn’t handle it well.” Carol stuttered uncharacteristically and her hands flew around her head. “I don’t know what I could have done differently in the moment, but I am so very, very sorry that I hurt you.” Carol’s voice broke into a sob. “I’m so sorry I hurt you again.” She opened her purse to search for a handkerchief but found it difficult to see through the tears. Eventually she gave up. She threw her purse on the floor and collapsed on the couch, her face in her hands. 

Therese watched Carol’s shoulders shudder for a moment, then she stepped gingerly toward the couch. “Why are you even here, Carol?”

Carol looked up, her eyes ringed with makeup that had smeared from her crying. “Are you truly this cold, Therese?” Carol pulled at the collar of her coat and straightened herself. Therese said nothing, but stood there glowering and breathing hard. “I guess then I don’t know why I am here. I’m sorry I disturbed you.” Carol stood. Therese watched as she collected herself and her purse. Carol started for the door. 

Therese bit her lower lip and crossed her arms over her chest. She made an almost inaudible growl in the back of her throat, a noise of helpless frustration or something else entirely, but Carol did not look at her as she walked past. Therese dropped her arms to her side and rolled her eyes up to still the tear that threatened to fall. 

Therese took a step toward the door where Carol had arrived.

She caught Carol’s wrist in a firm grasp.

“Wait,” she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you for your comments and kindness. Thank you for reading and for being so present and wonderful. You are all such a gift to me. xoxoxo.


	16. A Dream Upon Waking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hiiiiiii. . . . So, I accidentally posted this as a stand alone story. My bad. But I also wanted to post it here for all of you who are already possibly following this series. I miss and love you all and hope that you will forgive my inexcusable absence. I also hope this chapter doesn't ring too phony/redundant/pointless. I had some stuff I needed to work out and I had some imagery I wanted to use and this is how it came into play. 
> 
> Thank you as ever for being here. I hope you will say hi in the comments. xoxoxo.

It does not take a ghost to haunt.

Our minds can do a nifty enough job of that all on their own.

Without rhyme or reason, they can drag us back through time and space into boneyards of memory where we have no business or desire to be.

That’s how it is when I dream of her.

She is under heaps of soil in my subconscious, and yet she is there all the same. She waits for me and finds me when I am unsuspecting, when the grave has been uncovered and our skeletons shine bright in the moon.

They come without any warning, the dreams, and seem to bear the same weight out across the bones of my chest as I sleep, even as they differ in thematic material.

I watch her tuck her feet up under her and smile as she leans back against the bed.

I feel her press her shoulder up close to mine in an elevator as we ride up and up and up to someplace presumably splendid.

Always, I’m smiling.

She slides a emerald, silk scarf off her neck in a ravishingly slow motion.

I grab the inside of her wrist and hold it in my own fist and we stand, frozen in time feeling nothing or everything as her pulse finds mine and we match one another.

She tilts her head to the side and smiles with her entire face so her eyes crinkle.

I taste bourbon on her lips and hear her throaty laugh.

She strokes my cheek with her knuckles.

There is little actual conversation, but when we do talk, it is casual and kind. She says things like, “Would you like to go to the zoo today, Therese?” Or she says, “I like to just watch you work.” They are small words no one would believe make me wake and weep until the very landscape of my face shifts, becomes puffed up like the world before or after a storm.

Morning comes and heaves earth back over us in haste as my eyes open to the sun and I’m lifted back to the living. I grope at the moss of my sleep, trying to remember and make sense of what I saw and heard and felt.

It is torture to forget.

Part of my brain ticks off days, even as I live them without thinking I am living a life without Carol; I am existing in a world in which she exists for me only in one dimension, in black and white. Like a prisoner, I try not to think about all the days before or after because the weight of them is infinite and crushing, much like the dreams. I begin the day with coffee and end it with beer and in between I go to work. On the weekends I take my photos and make my sketches and share a brunch or supper or a show with friends. To them, I am no different than I was before her. To me, I am irrevocably altered. This split reality might be the most bizarre aspect of my life now- that I can live so deeply buried by such a profound grief, and yet walk among the living in the sun. At times it makes such little sense to me it literally takes my breath away and I double over, gasping until my face is wet with tears and the crying comes.

There are times I’ll go a few weeks without a dream and the pain seems to lessen. It’s as though she seeps from my pores and I am free. I almost forget to feel caged by loss and longing for her. Then I remember I have not dreamed, and my bereavement begins anew. I crave contact with her, even if it is only on the blurred boundaries of my subconscious. But I cannot command my mind to fly to her, to conjure her visage to suite my craving.

Only one photograph of the two of us exists. I can look you in the eye and tell you I never drag it out from where it is hidden in the creases of a Bille Holiday album at the bottom of a stack of records in my living room. I can look you straight in the eye and tell you I never exhume it from its resting place and stare at it for long moments. I can say I haven’t held it so long, and so often that the oil from my fingertips have not made imperfections in the photo’s sheen. I can also state with confidence that there is no blur on the upper left hand corner of the picture from sloppy tears that dropped from my own eyes with a quiet thump onto it.

I can tell you all of this because living the dual existence of grief makes me an excellent liar.

We were in the booth of a restaurant somewhere out West. I’d been taking shots of her and she’d been in a mood to oblige me with sultry and silly faces over her martini glass. “Oh, I wish we could get one of the two of us,” she said. “Do you think we could ask someone? The waiter perhaps?”

“Come here,” I said. She looked confused so I repeated my request and patted the seat on the bench beside me. She slipped over to my side of the booth. “Here, get close,” I said and held the camera up and pointed it at us.

“Will that work?” She asked in a voice that sounded amazed and amused all at once.

“It should. Now smile.” I started to count to three and smiled, but at the last moment, she turned and pressed her lips to my cheek.

That’s the image I have now. Carol, with her eyes closed, lips pressed against my cheek and me, my happy smile turned into a surprised grin. We are off center and close up, caught there on that rectangle of paper, for all time.

We go to our graves, many of us, without answers, and so I do not ask why she did it, why she left me there and why she never spoke to me again. During my days of wandering before I returned to New York, I tried to fill in the blanks, but I gave up trying to make sense of it soon after I came home. It exhausts me to repress those questions, to keep them soundly stuffed under the topsoil of our headstone.

My new project keeps me busy. I daresay I almost enjoy it. When I’m in the theater it hardly seems I’m leading two lives, because the theater is a place where duality is sanctioned, both on stage and off. The director of the show seems to appreciate my input and I’m becoming bolder in my choice of words. Some nights I go home and smile a little to myself and think about the things I’ve said and how I’ve been received and I think how Carol would hardly recognize me now. What would she say about my short hair and the way I readily express disagreement on a particular aspect of the show’s design? Would she ever guess I could be so brazen? I work as much and as late as I can.

The job pays better than my others. I haven’t been able to move yet, but I bought myself a few new things. I bought myself a fine winter coat in a rich fawn color, and I also purchased a silk dress. The dress is a deep, plum and it is cut in a sharp style that takes me some getting used to, as it is far more mature than my woolen skirts and sweaters.

I wear the dress to the party. I like how it matches the glass of wine I hold, and how one of the actresses there tells me it brings out my eyes.

At times like this I can’t help but wonder what Carol would think of me, how she’d look at me and if she’d say something outright, or if she’d save her observation for later when we were alone. Would she whisper her sentiment in my ear as she laid her body on top of mine? That would be so like her. I could imagine her watching me move around all night in that dress, only to get me out of it and then tell me what she thought as her hair brushed over the skin of my breast and belly and she wrote her opinion over me with her lips and tongue.

These thoughts make me shiver. I shouldn’t be thinking them, but I do.

My eyes cast down and watch the ripples in my wine as my hand shakes.

I hear her voice before I see her and for a moment I think I am going mad. It’s been months since we have had any contact outside of my sleep. The party I’m at is for the play I’m helping design the set for and if doesn’t make any sense that she would be here, except as a manifestation of my imagination gone wild. But it’s her laugh, make no mistake. I hear it and it is real and then I feel like I’m going mad in a whole different way. The drink in my hand sloshes over the rim of the glass and onto my hand and dress and the floor as I spin around, searching. She’s there. Across the room, chatting up a pair of actors. She catches my eye at about the same time and brazenly excuses herself from her conversation to approach me.

“Well, well,” she says. “How do you do, Therese?”

“What are you doing here?” I hiss. My heart beats frantically.

She takes a cigarette out and offers one to me. I shake my head brusquely and she shrugs and lights hers. “The director is a good friend of mine. I had no idea you would be here. I’m sorry if my presence has upset you.”

“I’ve designed the sets for the first and third acts,” I say. My tone is a blend of clipped pride.

“Oh, Therese! How wonderful for you! My, how you’ve arrived! Congratulations.”

“Yes. Thank you,” I say. She seems genuinely pleased for me. Her face looks thin, but glad and she’s wrapped in a royal blue dress that accentuates both the curves of her waist and the color of her eyes.

“Therese,” she says. “How have you been otherwise?”

“I’m fine,” I say and my voice starts to waver. I set my glass on the nearest table, suddenly cognizant of the dark stain that has settled on the fabric of my dress. I try to cover it with my hands. “Actually, I was just leaving. So, goodnight.” I turn and start to walk down the hall toward the room where my coat is, but I feel her following me. I feel her hand on my elbow.

“Therese,” she says. “Do you just hate me now? All these months and it seems I can feel your anger across the entire city.”

I pivot and face her. “You’re wrong. I’m not angry. And I’ve never hated you.” She stands there looking at me, waiting for me to say more. “How would you know what I feel? If I’m angry or anything? You walked away from me and never looked back! How dare you make any presumptions about what I feel?” I yank my arm from her.

“I suppose that is fair,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

“How could you?” I ask. They are not the words I want to say, but they are the only words I own at this moment in time.

A yellow ribbon of her hair slips in front of her cornflower blue eye. “I really couldn’t,” she whispers in that low, smoky, hoarse way. She shakes the lock off her face and it is a gesture that is so familiar and yet its been so long since I’ve witnessed it. It almost breaks me. I cross my arms over my chest to try and keep myself held together, in one piece. “But it was the only thing I knew to do.” She reaches out and strokes my cheek with her knuckles. To my surprise, I neither flinch or wince, but find myself leaning my head against her hand. She opens her palm and cups my face.

“Carol,” I breathe, if only to say her name.

“Therese, will you let me explain? You can walk away and you can despise me or be angry or feel whatever you feel and never acknowledge me again, but please allow me to explain, and please know I am sorry.”

“All right,” I say. She leads me to a sofa and we sit down.

She touches my arm briefly. “So pale,” she whispers and then inhales. “Years ago, after Abby, Harge and my family, well, they were rabid. This was before Rindy was born so they had no leverage on me with her, but they threatened to destroy not just my reputation but also Abby’s. Eventually, they let it go and then Rindy was born and parenthood sort of appeased Harge.”

“What does this have to do with me,” I snap.

“I was scared. When I returned, Harge was on the warpath and I was so frightened he would try to find you and ruin you too. It was the best I could do to walk the other way. Do you see?” She seems to be looking at me in a manner that could best be described as beseeching, but I’m not quite certain what to do with it. So, I sit there and stare at her, collecting the familiar and somehow unfamiliar features of her with my eyes so I might have them to remember later. “No, I don’t suppose you would see, would you,” she huffs at last, perhaps a bit frustrated by my silence.

“I don’t know what to say,” I whisper.

“Well, I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that. So indifferent. How very cold you’ve grown.”

“Cold? Of course I’m cold! I’m partly dead inside! You killed me, or a part of me anyway- the part of me that felt and loved and was warm. Aren’t all dead things cold, Carol?”

“Oh, Therese, my sweet,” she breathes and clutches my hands in hers. “I love you. I do so love you, Therese. Won’t you allow me to breathe life and warmth back into you?”

“Why? So you can leave me again?” I yelp and realize suddenly I’m sobbing. She shushes me and holds my body to hers. She puts her hand on the back of my neck and I feel her fingers in my hair, cradling my head. After a while she holds me at arms length. She looks at me with a strange mix of emotion on her face I can’t quite read.

“I am sorry,” she says softly.

“Yes. You said that,” I sniffle.

“Petulant little darling,” she chuckles.

“I apologize; that was harsh.”

“No. No. I deserved that.” She produces a handkerchief and dabs at my eyes. My body slouches, limply against hers. She puts a hand on my thigh and rubs it in that old, familiar, way of comfort. “This is a pretty dress,” she murmurs.

“Thanks.”

“When I first saw you, you quite took my breath away, with this new dress and glamorous haircut. You know, I dream of you, but you never look like this.”

“You dream of me?” I ask.

“Oh, yes. All the time. I can never decide if they are a blessing or a curse, the dreams. I wake from them and it is as though I’ve been visited by a ghost or something, I don’t know. I suppose that sounds ridiculous.” She says.

“It doesn’t sound ridiculous at all.” I say.

“And now,” she says in a breathy whisper. “Here you are. So close to me. It feels almost unreal, but not like a dream at all. So very strange.”

“Yes,” I swallow the last of my tears. Her hands are on my face and her breath is on my face and her eyes are all I see before I close my eyes to darkness and allow my lips to be found by hers. She seems at first tentative, holding back, but as the warmth flows between us the kiss deepens naturally. I find her waist with my hands and hold it. She’s cupping my face and pulling me in closer and I don’t remember a kiss like this in any of my dreams or ever before. It tastes of wine and salt and smoke and it smells of Carol’s shampoo and perfume. I feel her. Carol, in my arms, real and not a ghost at all.

“Will you forgive me?” She whispers in a nuzzle against my cheek.

“Yes,” I sigh, and if feels good and right to say it, but it feels even better to drag my lips over her face until they mask her mouth and we breathlessly breathe the same breath that we are stealing over and over from one another.

“Will you love me again?” She asks.

“Carol, I love you. I never stopped loving you,” I speak, my lips against hers.

From this dream I need not wake, for I am not asleep.

From this death I need not rise, for into my body the breath of life floods once again.

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to comment! Thank you for reading. I try to respond to all comments, and I love to hear from readers.


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